The wife of an Indian-origin cult leader in the UK found guilty ofrape and child cruelty has defended him alleging he was framed.
Chanda Balakrishnan lived with Aravindan Balakrishnan as part of a secretive extremist Maoist sect in London for nearly 30 years.
Aravindan Balakrishnan, or Comrade Bala as he was known, wasconvicted of six counts of indecent assault, four counts of rape and two counts of actual bodily harmlast Decemberand now faces life in prison when he is sentenced next week.
"It was a frame-up,"his wife told 'The Times' today.
She realised he had raped womeninside theWorkers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought Collective and even fathered a child with one of the women only during the court proceedings at Southwark Crown Court, London.
"I was shocked. We lived in small privately rented accommodation, so we were always on top of each other. I couldn't see how it happened. He is loving me all the time. It was a mistake that happens. For 99.99 per cent of the time he is loving me and not these other people," she said outside her north London home.
Balakrishnan fathered a daughter with devoted follower Sian Davies and kept her imprisoned in a London flat for years.
But his wife believes that the women involved had coerced him into having sex.
The couple met in 1964 while Aravindan was a student at the London School of Economics and Chanda, who was born in India and grew up in Malaysia, was a student activist.
"He was very attentive to me and I used to like listening to him. I would rather listen to him than anybody else because he is an intellectual giant," she told the newspaper.
They were engaged in 1964 and married in 1969, at about the time he began his collective.
Scotland Yard raided the couple's flat in Brixton, south London, in November 2013 after two followers called a charity seeking help.
Following a lengthy trial, he was convicted and is currently being held at Wandsworth prison in London where his wife recently visited him.
"He looked as if he had shrunk, he was lost. I don't allow myself to think about the sentencing. I suppose I am still hoping that he will come home," she said.
Following the guilty verdict last year, Judge Deborah Taylor had told Balakrishnan: "You should expect a substantial custodial sentence".
