A maoist cult leader who raped two of his followers and kept his daughter a “slave” for 30 years has died in prison aged 81.
Aravindan Balakrishnan, from Enfield, called himself Comrade Bala and brainwashed his cult into thinking he had godlike powers. One of his followers was a young woman from mid Wales who turned her back on a privileged life to live her life with Balakrishnan, isolated from her family, friends and society.
Sian Davies, a GP's daughter from Tregaron, Ceredigion, had always had the best of everything. Educated at a boarding school in Malvern in Worcestershire and then Cheltenham Ladies College, she went on to study law at Aberystwyth University. After graduating she headed to London to study at the London School of Economics where she met Balakrishnan in the mid 1970s.
