A hard-left cult leader who kept his own daughter captive for decades and sexually assaulted his followers has died in prison
Aravindan Balakrishnan, 81, called himself Comrade Bala and dominated a small Maoist sect in Brixton who he convinced into thinking he had godlike powers.
The pensioner, who was jailed for 23 years in 2016, died in Dartmoor prison on Friday according to the prison service.
Despite believing the United Kingdom to be a fascist state, Balakrishnan emigrated to the UK in 1963 on a British Council scholarship to study at the London School of Economics.
He set up the Workers’ Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought in the 1970s in south London and told his followers that disobeying him would unleash supernatural forces and convinced them he could read their minds.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/south-london-cult-leader-comrade-bala-dies-prison-b993489.html