A Melbourne woman convicted of keeping a Tamil woman as a slave called her victim in the lead-up to her Victorian Supreme Court trial to talk her out of giving evidence.
Kumuthini Kannan was found guilty alongside her husband Kandasamy in 2021 for keeping the woman in domestic servitude in their Glen Waverley home between 2007 and 2015.
She has now admitted attempting to pervert the course of justice, by contacting her victim to discourage her from giving evidence.
The woman, now in her 70s, had said she worked up to 23 hours a day doing housework, caring for the couple's children and was restricted from going outside or mixing with members of Melbourne's Tamil community.
She had tea and curries thrown at her, was beaten with a frozen chicken and when her son-in-law asked the Kannans to let her return home to Tamil Nadu in southern India, they responded "f*** you".
She was rushed to hospital in July 2015 after she collapsed, suffering untreated diabetes and sepsis.
Emergency room doctors described her as "fading away".
The night before the woman was due to meet with police to go over statements she made while in hospital, where her servitude was uncovered, Kannan phoned the woman's nursing home from a shopping centre pay phone.
She claimed to be a translator who had worked for the courts for 14 years, and repeatedly told her that she should not give evidence in the upcoming trial for her and her husband.
"Think of me as a mother, trust me, do as I say," Kannan told the vulnerable woman who weighed just 40kg when she was found by paramedics in the family's suburban home.
Kannan told the woman that police would not help her and if she listened to police she would never be able to leave Australia or see her daughter again.
"You'll be here until you perish," Kannan told her.
Referring to herself in the third person, Kannan told the woman she had taken her on a trip to Sydney and asked if the police had done that for her.
Police and lawyers were in it for the money and to make a name for themselves, she claimed.
Phone records show a call made to the woman's nursing home about 8pm on February 16, 2020 while CCTV puts Kannan in front of a shopping centre pay phone connected to the number the call came from.
Kannan's lawyer told the court there were no physical threats made by her to the woman and accepted that while the woman was vulnerable, that arose from the case Kannan had already been sentenced for.
Judge Martine Marich said it was to the woman's credit she had not wavered and continued assisting police.
Kannan was sentenced to eight years behind bars and ordered to serve at least four for the slavery offences, while her husband is serving at least three years of an six year sentence.
Kannan will be sentenced for this matter next month.
