Three men in Missouri have been arrested and face a spate of felonies for allegedly holding a 20-year-old Indian student against his will in the basement of various homes where he was beaten, starved, deprived of sleep, and forced to perform slave labor.
Venkatesh R. Sattaru, Sravan Varma Penumetcha and Nikhil Verma Penmatsa were taken into custody late last month and charged with one count each of human trafficking for the purposes of slavery, involuntary servitude, peonage, or forced labor; contributing to human trafficking — misuse of documentation; first-degree kidnapping; and abuse through forced labor, among other charges, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
According to a news release from the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney of St. Charles County, the 20-year-old victim traveled from India to the U.S. on a student visa “with the promise of an education” but was instead “held captive in the basement of several homes owned by Sataru. The homes were in Dardenne Prairie and Defiance, Missouri. Both are about 40 miles west of St. Louis, with Dardenne Prairie about 14 miles north of Defiance.
Venkatesh R. Sattaru, Sravan Varma Penumetcha, and Nikhil V. Penmatsa (St. Charles County Department of Corrections)
The investigation into the trio began when officers with the St. Charles County Police Department responded to a call requesting a welfare check on an individual residing at Sattaru’s home in unincorporated Defiance.
Once there, first responders said they could not initially contact the victim. However, police said that a few minutes later, the victim “was able to run out the front door screaming for help.”
The victim was immediately taken to a hospital for treatment of his various injuries and ailments. Doctors said the man had suffered fractures in his hands, fingers, feet, arms, nose, and ribs, which were in various stages of healing, indicating long-term abuse. He was also treated for numerous “open lacerations” and had scarring “covering his complete body,” prosecutors said.
“During the investigation, it was learned the victim was held in the basement of these residences and forced to work at Satttaru’s company in addition to other menial tasks,” prosecutors wrote in the release. “When he did not complete the tasks, or not to the defendants’ satisfaction, they would beat him with their fists, kick him, stomp on him and whip him with electrical wire, sometimes to the point he would lose consciousness. He was sleep deprived and starved as well.”
The defendants all appeared in court last week and pleaded not guilty. A judge ruled they should all remain in detention without bond.
According to a criminal complaint filed in Missouri’s Eleventh Judicial District and obtained by Law&Crime, the abuse took place between April 1, 2023, and Nov. 28, 2023.
The complaint states that the defendants were “acting in concert” when they caused “serious physical injury” to the victim “by repeatedly beating [the victim] about the body” while he was “unlawfully confined,” “coerced and physically assaulted for the purpose of forced labor.”
They are also accused of destroying the victim’s passport to prevent him from traveling.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the victim is Sattaru’s cousin and planned to study at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. Instead, he was reportedly forced to rise daily at 4:30 a.m. to do morning housework, work a complete day for Sattaru’s IT company, and then do more housework at night.
Authorities reportedly said that Sattaru was the ringleader of the abuse, but all three defendants took part in the physical and emotional torture.
He reportedly told police that he was only given about three hours to sleep each night, which he did on the concrete floor of a locked basement while Sattaru’s had a security camera trained on him.
“It’s absolutely inhumane and unconscionable that one human being could treat another human being like this,” St. Charles County Prosecuting Attorney Joseph McCulloch said during a news conference on the arrests, St. Louis Fox affiliate KTVI reported. He added that the crimes were brought to the attention of authorities by a concerned citizen who “saw something suspicious” and contacted police.
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