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A plea bargain that smears Indians

When Lakireddy Bali Reddy was arrested in January 2000 on charges of smuggling Indians into the United States for cheap labour and village girls to be his sex slaves, his supporters claimed that the extensive coverage of the case was due to a backlash against Indian dotcom successes.

It was the perfect hammer for American journalists to beat down the image of the Indian community in the Silicon Valley, they argued. Reddy, 63, a rich restaurateur and real-estate mogul, was the perfect target.

Reddy's attorney Ted Cassman then denied the charges against his client, asserting that Reddy "is a longstanding, law-abiding citizen of Berkeley" and "everybody who knows him know that these charges are not true".

But in March, Reddy tearfully pleaded guilty to the charges in front of an Oakland judge.

Now it is the end of June and he will be in court on Monday for his sentencing hearing. And again, the image of the Indian community is being smeared, but this time, no one can be blamed except for Reddy and his attorney.

Reddy's March contrition was spurred by a plea bargain aimed at reducing his punishment. Though he could have been imprisoned for a maximum of 38 years for his crimes, which include transporting minors for sex, immigration fraud and tax fraud, he was offered nearly seven years in return for his plea.

He also escaped more serious charges, including rape and having sex with minors, by pledging $2 million in reparations to his four victims.

To bolster the arguments for a lesser sentence, Cassman pointed out Reddy's philanthropy both in the Bay Area and in his native village of Velvadam, near Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh.

Cassman has taken a similar approach on Reddy's new "cultural defence". Court documents filed this week point out that Reddy was married as a 17-year-old to a 13-year-old girl, intending to show that in India, intimate relationships with young girls are the norm.

"We ask the court ... to consider that Reddy is a product of a society in which ... the norms of his society were amenable to conduct which is clearly offensive in the US," Cassman wrote.

The backlash against such statements has been loud and swift.

"The argument is very wrong," said Chitra Divakaruni, best-selling author and co-founder of Maitri, a Bay Area support group that helps battered South Asian women.

"To say that having sex with minors, or forcing women into sex, is accepted in India just because some people indulge in such activities is not right," she said.

"It is not accepted in the India that I know of," she added.

"I don't know how he's giving that defence," concurs Jeevan Zutshi, founder of the Indo-American Community Federation.

"He brought the girls over here as slaves, we all know this now," Zutshi continued. "All this new defence is just nonsense. He's a desperate person to give all sorts of excuses."

Jayashri Srikantiah, a member of the American Civil Liberties Union and counsel for Reddy's victims, was puzzled by the statements. "It is wrong for them to create an image that such behaviour could be acceptable or legal in India," she said.

"It's suggestive language and its implications are that Reddy's actions would be acceptable in India. But there's no way that kind of behaviour would be, so I don't know the strategy behind that argument.

"Plenty of people in India are outraged at Reddy ... the fact that he was married at a young age is irrelevant to the crimes he committed."

Reddy came in 1961 to the United States, completing his master's in chemical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. But he left chemistry for real estate, and built an empire of more than 1,000 rental units in the East Bay Area.

His properties today are worth more than $50 million and he collects more than $1 million in rent from tenants each month, not counting income from his commercial properties or his Pasand restaurants in Berkeley and Santa Clara.

Reddy used this wealth to wield almost god-like influence over his native village. The locals revered the man who would build schools, colleges, bus stands and temples, and offer them the chance to come to work under him in America.

In return, Reddy would pick village girls to come back with him to America.

"Reddy was unimaginably wealthy, all-powerful, and in apparent full control of the world in which they were brought to live," Assistant US Attorney John Kennedy noted in court papers also filed this week.

"They believed that Reddy could cause the ruination of their family name, the financial devastation of their extended families in India and literally the end of their lives if he chose to return them to India as disgraced women."

Two such young women were found unconscious in an apartment owned by Reddy. Chanti Prattipati, 17, and her younger sister were overcome by carbon monoxide poisoning on November 24, 1999. Chanti, who the police say was 10 days pregnant with Reddy's child, died. Her sister, though, survived.

Newspapers reported the story and two high-school students asked why the girl wasn't in school. Their story, and anonymous tips, led to an investigation of Reddy and his arrest last year on January 14.

"We are living here, and we have to abide by the laws in this country," Divakaruni said. "We must abide by the rules of common decency, rules that protect women, especially helpless young girls."

The Lakireddy Case: The complete coverage

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