Two persons arrested on suspicion of allegedly holding three women as slaves here are originally from India and Tanzania and arrived in Britain in the 1960s, authorities said today.
"The suspects are of Indian and Tanzanian origin that came to the UK in the 1960s," Metropolitan Police Commander Steve Rodhouse said in a statement.
The couple, both 67 years old, were arrested on Thursday on charges of slavery and immigration offences after three women - a 69-year-old Malaysian, a 57-year-old Irish and a 30-year-old Briton - were freed by police from a house in south London.
The women were allegedly being held by the couple against their will for decades. The suspects have now been freed on bail while investigations continue.
It has emerged as part of the Metropolitan police inquiries that the women allegedly held in a house for 30 years were originally part of a "collective" based on a "shared political ideology".
"We believe that two of the victims met the male suspect in London through a shared political ideology, and that they lived together at an address that you could effectively call 'collective'," Rodhouse said.
"The people involved, the nature of that collective and how it operated is all subject to our investigation and we are slowly and painstakingly piecing together more information. I will not give any further information about it. Somehow that collective came to an end," he said.
"How the women ended up continuing to live with the suspects, and how this resulted in the women living in this way for over 30 years, is what are seeking to establish. But we believe emotional and physical abuse has been a feature of all the victims' lives," he added.
Police are carrying out house to house enquiries in the Peckford Place area of Lambeth where the women were held.
The arrests were made after the Irish woman phoned a charity last month to say she was being held against her will along with two others.
The charity engaged in a series of secretive conversations with the women and contacted police. Two of the women eventually left the house, and police rescued the third.
Aneeta Prem, founder of Freedom Charity which helped free the women, said: "We have seen an extraordinary rise in calls to our helpline since the rescue of the three women came into the public domain.
"We received five times as many calls in 24 hours as we normally do in one week and are needing to increase our resources to cope with this extra demand.
