Slaves of Berkeley: The Shocking Story of Human Trafficking In the United States
Lakireddy Bali Reddy was a noted successful businessman; he owned restaurants and real estate all over Northern California and made over $1,000,000 a month from his income properties. He also had a dirty little secret to success..he forced Indian girls into slavery.
All was going well for Lakireddy until a carbon monoxide leak led to the death of one of his underaged slaves, and led to his arrest.
This is the story of the human trafficking ring that shuck a nation and opened the door for reform in the United States.
All was going well for Lakireddy until a carbon monoxide leak led to the death of one of his underaged slaves, and led to his arrest.
This is the story of the human trafficking ring that shuck a nation and opened the door for reform in the United States.
Buy Now!
|
Slaves of Berkley PDF and ePub |
Excerpt
Chapter 1: An Accidental Death
It was the afternoon before Thanksgiving Day in 1999, and longtime Berkeley resident Marcia Poole was driving down Bancroft Way when she noticed four Indian men hauling what appeared to be a rolled-up rug out of a rundown apartment building. Maybe it was the rushed, nervous manner of the men, maybe it was the way the rug they carried was sagging in the middle, or maybe it was just a gut feeling, but Ms. Poole knew that something about what she was witnessing was very, very wrong. She slowed down and watched the men as they opened the door to a van that was parked at the curb. As they loaded their cargo inside the back of the vehicle, Ms. Poole’s suspicions were confirmed when she saw a leg dangle out from beneath the folds of their bundle. At that point, she did what most people in her position never would have done—she stopped her car, got out and walked over to confront the men.
As she marched towards the van, she saw another group of men holding onto a teenage Indian girl dressed in traditional baggy and colorful garb, her black hair pulled into a braid. She was crying and screaming, trying to pull away from the men as she pleaded with them in a language Ms. Poole did not understand. But she didn’t need an interpreter to know that the men were trying to force the young girl into the van against her will. Ms. Poole rushed over and planted herself in front of the open doors and demanded that the men stop what they were doing and release the girl. The men froze and looked back at her for a moment in uncertainty. None of them seemed accustomed to taking orders from a woman, especially a woman they didn’t know. One of them stepped forward, and the others parted to let him through. He was a heavy-set, round-faced Indian man in his early sixties, and he was clearly the one in charge. He glared at Ms. Poole with the confidence and intimidating demeanor of a man who always gets his way. “Go away,” he said. “This is a family affair.”
Marcia Poole may have been brave, but she wasn’t stupid. She was extremely outnumbered and didn’t want her rescue attempt to end up with her being tossed into the back of the van as well. She did as the man commanded and moved away, but not before she noticed that the body the men had thrown inside the van was moving. It was another young Indian girl and Ms. Poole could now see that what she had mistaken for a rug was actually the girl’s clothing, and she had been completely wrapped up in it. She must have been knocked out when she was carried out of the building, but now, she was regaining consciousness and trying to untangle herself from her garments, clearly confused and disoriented, but thankfully, alive.
Ms. Poole had no idea what she had stumbled upon, but she had no intention of abandoning these girls to whatever fate this group of men had in store for them. She had to do something, but whatever that something was, she couldn’t do it alone. She turned to the streets of Berkeley for help and started trying to flag down cars. Several drivers refused to stop, ignoring her completely or swerving to avoid her. Most of the ones that did stop only paused long enough to tell her that they didn’t want to get involved. Finally, she managed to convince a reluctant driver with a cell phone to call 911 and very soon, she heard the glorious sound of sirens in the distance. As the sirens grew louder, the Indian men released the crying girl and most of them seemed to simply vanish, nonchalantly ducking into storefronts and blending into the gathering crowd.
Police and firefighters arrived, and while they were securing the area, a third young Indian girl was found lying in a heap on the floor of the dark stairwell Ms. Poole had seen the men emerge from. The girl was unconscious and unresponsive to any attempts to rouse her. With one witness completely unconscious, one only barely awake and another in hysterics, the police had their work cut out for them in trying to get a handle on the strange situation.
As they attempted to question the hysterical girl, they found that she did not speak English, only Telugu, a language of southern India. Although Berkeley has a large South Asian population and there were many Indian people who had appeared at the scene, the police had trouble finding anyone who was willing to serve as an interpreter. That was when the imposing, round-faced man who had tried to intimidate Ms. Poole stepped forward and offered his services. He introduced himself as Lakireddy Bali Reddy, a name that was well known in the Bay Area.
Lakireddy Bali Reddy was a multimillionaire restaurateur and property mogul, and the living embodiment of the American dream. He had immigrated to the United States from India in 1960 to study chemical engineering at the University of California in Berkeley, but after earning his master’s degree and working in that field for several years, he decided to go into business for himself. In 1975, he opened the Pasand Madras Indian Cuisine Restaurant on Shattuck Avenue in downtown Berkeley, just around the corner from where he now stood, talking to the police. The restaurant was a huge and almost immediate success, and while one prosperous business might have been enough for many men, Reddy was far too ambitious to stop there. He used the money he earned from his restaurant to buy cheap, dilapidated apartment buildings in the Berkeley area, then fix them up and rent them out. As his profits increased, so did his empire. He bought building after building until he owned apartments all across the East Bay. Over time, his company amassed more than one thousand apartment units that generated over one million dollars in rent every single month. He became the largest and richest landlord in the city; only his alma mater, the University of California, housed more Berkeley residents than he did. Reddy Reality was a Bay Area institution, and although his company was known for some shady practices, including poor maintenance and refusal to return tenants’ security deposits, he made up for it with his generous philanthropy, both in Berkeley and in his home village in India. Reddy was worth over sixty million dollars and was viewed as a pillar of the community, and the police were more than happy to accept his help in sorting out the confusing situation.
Reddy explained to the police that the hysterical girl was eighteen-year-old Laxmi Patati and she was an employee at his restaurant. His realty company owned the apartment building where Laxmi lived with her two roommates, seventeen-year-old Sitha Vemireddy, the girl found in the stairwell, and Sitha’s fifteen-year-old sister, Lalitha, the semi-conscious girl the men had thrown into the back of the van. According to Reddy, Laxmi said that she had been out running errands and had returned home to find Sitha and Lalitha lying unconscious in the apartment. Because of her extremely tenuous grasp on the English language, instead of calling an ambulance, she called Reddy’s restaurant for help. Reddy said that he and his colleague, Venkateswara Vemireddy, Sitha and Lalitha’s father, hurried over to the building right away and were in the process of rushing the girls to the hospital when Ms. Poole intervened.
An ambulance transported Sitha and Lalitha to Alta Bates Hospital where it was determined that the girls had suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning. Lalitha was treated and released the next day, but sadly, Sitha was pronounced dead on arrival. Even worse, an autopsy revealed that the teenage girl had been about ten days pregnant when she died. Keeping with Hindu tradition (even though the girls’ parents were Christian), Reddy saw to the funeral arrangements himself and paid to have Sitha’s remains cremated.
Investigators discovered that a blocked heating vent had caused the carbon monoxide fumes to leak into the girls’ apartment. Reddy had recently had some work done on the roof and the debris the workers left behind had clogged the ventilation system. Further investigation revealed that there were a total of sixty-three leaks in the building, putting almost everyone who lived there in mortal danger. Although landlords are usually held accountable for negligence of such a grand scale, especially when it results in the death of a tenant, Berkeley police absolved Reddy of any guilt or responsibility, and thanked him for his helpful assistance in the matter.
Marcia Poole, however, did not believe Reddy’s story. She hounded the police for days, claiming that Reddy had been involved in what she still believed was an attempted abduction and his translation of Laxmi’s story should be considered suspect at best. But the Vemireddys didn’t seem to agree with Ms. Poole. The girls’ father claimed that he didn’t blame Reddy for the death of his daughter at all. He blamed his own karma.
Ultimately, the authorities decided that the strange circumstances surrounding the ordeal that had occurred on Bancroft Way could be attributed to cultural differences that Americans simply couldn’t understand. Sitha’s death was ruled accidental, and the case was closed.
It was the afternoon before Thanksgiving Day in 1999, and longtime Berkeley resident Marcia Poole was driving down Bancroft Way when she noticed four Indian men hauling what appeared to be a rolled-up rug out of a rundown apartment building. Maybe it was the rushed, nervous manner of the men, maybe it was the way the rug they carried was sagging in the middle, or maybe it was just a gut feeling, but Ms. Poole knew that something about what she was witnessing was very, very wrong. She slowed down and watched the men as they opened the door to a van that was parked at the curb. As they loaded their cargo inside the back of the vehicle, Ms. Poole’s suspicions were confirmed when she saw a leg dangle out from beneath the folds of their bundle. At that point, she did what most people in her position never would have done—she stopped her car, got out and walked over to confront the men.
As she marched towards the van, she saw another group of men holding onto a teenage Indian girl dressed in traditional baggy and colorful garb, her black hair pulled into a braid. She was crying and screaming, trying to pull away from the men as she pleaded with them in a language Ms. Poole did not understand. But she didn’t need an interpreter to know that the men were trying to force the young girl into the van against her will. Ms. Poole rushed over and planted herself in front of the open doors and demanded that the men stop what they were doing and release the girl. The men froze and looked back at her for a moment in uncertainty. None of them seemed accustomed to taking orders from a woman, especially a woman they didn’t know. One of them stepped forward, and the others parted to let him through. He was a heavy-set, round-faced Indian man in his early sixties, and he was clearly the one in charge. He glared at Ms. Poole with the confidence and intimidating demeanor of a man who always gets his way. “Go away,” he said. “This is a family affair.”
Marcia Poole may have been brave, but she wasn’t stupid. She was extremely outnumbered and didn’t want her rescue attempt to end up with her being tossed into the back of the van as well. She did as the man commanded and moved away, but not before she noticed that the body the men had thrown inside the van was moving. It was another young Indian girl and Ms. Poole could now see that what she had mistaken for a rug was actually the girl’s clothing, and she had been completely wrapped up in it. She must have been knocked out when she was carried out of the building, but now, she was regaining consciousness and trying to untangle herself from her garments, clearly confused and disoriented, but thankfully, alive.
Ms. Poole had no idea what she had stumbled upon, but she had no intention of abandoning these girls to whatever fate this group of men had in store for them. She had to do something, but whatever that something was, she couldn’t do it alone. She turned to the streets of Berkeley for help and started trying to flag down cars. Several drivers refused to stop, ignoring her completely or swerving to avoid her. Most of the ones that did stop only paused long enough to tell her that they didn’t want to get involved. Finally, she managed to convince a reluctant driver with a cell phone to call 911 and very soon, she heard the glorious sound of sirens in the distance. As the sirens grew louder, the Indian men released the crying girl and most of them seemed to simply vanish, nonchalantly ducking into storefronts and blending into the gathering crowd.
Police and firefighters arrived, and while they were securing the area, a third young Indian girl was found lying in a heap on the floor of the dark stairwell Ms. Poole had seen the men emerge from. The girl was unconscious and unresponsive to any attempts to rouse her. With one witness completely unconscious, one only barely awake and another in hysterics, the police had their work cut out for them in trying to get a handle on the strange situation.
As they attempted to question the hysterical girl, they found that she did not speak English, only Telugu, a language of southern India. Although Berkeley has a large South Asian population and there were many Indian people who had appeared at the scene, the police had trouble finding anyone who was willing to serve as an interpreter. That was when the imposing, round-faced man who had tried to intimidate Ms. Poole stepped forward and offered his services. He introduced himself as Lakireddy Bali Reddy, a name that was well known in the Bay Area.
Lakireddy Bali Reddy was a multimillionaire restaurateur and property mogul, and the living embodiment of the American dream. He had immigrated to the United States from India in 1960 to study chemical engineering at the University of California in Berkeley, but after earning his master’s degree and working in that field for several years, he decided to go into business for himself. In 1975, he opened the Pasand Madras Indian Cuisine Restaurant on Shattuck Avenue in downtown Berkeley, just around the corner from where he now stood, talking to the police. The restaurant was a huge and almost immediate success, and while one prosperous business might have been enough for many men, Reddy was far too ambitious to stop there. He used the money he earned from his restaurant to buy cheap, dilapidated apartment buildings in the Berkeley area, then fix them up and rent them out. As his profits increased, so did his empire. He bought building after building until he owned apartments all across the East Bay. Over time, his company amassed more than one thousand apartment units that generated over one million dollars in rent every single month. He became the largest and richest landlord in the city; only his alma mater, the University of California, housed more Berkeley residents than he did. Reddy Reality was a Bay Area institution, and although his company was known for some shady practices, including poor maintenance and refusal to return tenants’ security deposits, he made up for it with his generous philanthropy, both in Berkeley and in his home village in India. Reddy was worth over sixty million dollars and was viewed as a pillar of the community, and the police were more than happy to accept his help in sorting out the confusing situation.
Reddy explained to the police that the hysterical girl was eighteen-year-old Laxmi Patati and she was an employee at his restaurant. His realty company owned the apartment building where Laxmi lived with her two roommates, seventeen-year-old Sitha Vemireddy, the girl found in the stairwell, and Sitha’s fifteen-year-old sister, Lalitha, the semi-conscious girl the men had thrown into the back of the van. According to Reddy, Laxmi said that she had been out running errands and had returned home to find Sitha and Lalitha lying unconscious in the apartment. Because of her extremely tenuous grasp on the English language, instead of calling an ambulance, she called Reddy’s restaurant for help. Reddy said that he and his colleague, Venkateswara Vemireddy, Sitha and Lalitha’s father, hurried over to the building right away and were in the process of rushing the girls to the hospital when Ms. Poole intervened.
An ambulance transported Sitha and Lalitha to Alta Bates Hospital where it was determined that the girls had suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning. Lalitha was treated and released the next day, but sadly, Sitha was pronounced dead on arrival. Even worse, an autopsy revealed that the teenage girl had been about ten days pregnant when she died. Keeping with Hindu tradition (even though the girls’ parents were Christian), Reddy saw to the funeral arrangements himself and paid to have Sitha’s remains cremated.
Investigators discovered that a blocked heating vent had caused the carbon monoxide fumes to leak into the girls’ apartment. Reddy had recently had some work done on the roof and the debris the workers left behind had clogged the ventilation system. Further investigation revealed that there were a total of sixty-three leaks in the building, putting almost everyone who lived there in mortal danger. Although landlords are usually held accountable for negligence of such a grand scale, especially when it results in the death of a tenant, Berkeley police absolved Reddy of any guilt or responsibility, and thanked him for his helpful assistance in the matter.
Marcia Poole, however, did not believe Reddy’s story. She hounded the police for days, claiming that Reddy had been involved in what she still believed was an attempted abduction and his translation of Laxmi’s story should be considered suspect at best. But the Vemireddys didn’t seem to agree with Ms. Poole. The girls’ father claimed that he didn’t blame Reddy for the death of his daughter at all. He blamed his own karma.
Ultimately, the authorities decided that the strange circumstances surrounding the ordeal that had occurred on Bancroft Way could be attributed to cultural differences that Americans simply couldn’t understand. Sitha’s death was ruled accidental, and the case was closed.
