A couple accused of keeping a Tamil woman as a slave in their Melbourne home for eight years allegedly tried to claim her relatives were extorting money from them.
The Mount Waverley couple, who cannot be identified, are accused of possessing the woman between July 2007 and July 2015 when she was rushed to hospital in a serious condition.
The woman, now in her 60s, was emaciated, suffering untreated diabetes and weighed just 40kg when she was rushed to hospital, where she stayed for more than two months.
She first came to Australia on two six-month tourist visas to care for the Melbourne couple's three children before being granted a one-month tourist visa in July 2007.
A month later the woman became an unlawful non-citizen and her passport expired in 2011, prosecutor Richard Maidment QC told the couple's Supreme Court trial.
He said the woman had gone to work for the family through an arrangement made by her son-in-law.
Letters shared with immigration authorities in visa applications claimed the families knew each other well, and that the accused Melbourne couple had regularly visited the woman at her home in southern India.
Mr Maidment told the jury that contact between the woman and her family in India started out two or three times a year, until around 2012 when contact dropped off significantly.
The woman's son-in-law emailed the couple to ask about her, and request that she be allowed to return home.
"Please send (her) back to the village," he asked.
But in an email chain found on the couple's computer the wife allegedly replied "f*** you".
The woman's family in India contacted authorities, and Victoria Police and later the Australian Federal Police began an investigation.
The wife told officers the woman had come to stay with them in 2007 but they hadn't seen her since.
The couple later contacted police with a lawyer and admitted they had been untruthful.
Until then officers hadn't been able to locate the woman, while hospital staff hadn't been able to identify her either.
Officers visited the couple's home again in October 2015.
Five days later AFP officers intercepted a phone call between them and an unknown man, believed to be in India, suggesting a letter be written asserting the son-in-law had offered to withdraw complaints about slavery if a specified sum of money was paid.
There were references to 10 lakh - one million rupees or around $A17,000.
"In other words, an extortion demand based on the allegations, essentially of slavery," Mr Maidment said.
The couple's barristers are expected to open their cases later on Thursday.
