London: Dramatic details of how two “slaves” held for more than 30 years met their captor in a “collective” through a “shared political ideology” were disclosed by police on Saturday.

The two women — a 69-year-old from Malaysia and a 57-year-old from Ireland — became enslaved after the collective ended, the officer leading the inquiry said. The third woman freed by officers last month was a 30-year-old who had a birth certificate but no other official documentation. Apparently she had been enslaved all her life.

The disclosure was among a series of developments that included:

Their captors, a man and a woman both aged 67, were said by police to be an Indian and a Tanzanian who came to Britain in the Sixties;

The five-year-old council maisonette where they lived in south London was identified, raising questions over what the local authority knew about the occupants;

Neighbours described how they had thought the alleged captors were “carers” for the three because they saw one of the alleged slaves being pushed in a wheelchair;

Other neighbours said there were claims on the estate where they lived that the 30-year-old had sent “love letters” to a man who lived in the same block;

Cult experts said their captivity showed how political ideologies could act like religious cults;

Theresa May, Britain’s Home Secretary, warned that slavery was now widespread in places including nail bars. The new twists in the slavery investigation follow the disclosure last Thursday that the three women had been rescued and their 67-year-old alleged captors arrested. More than 30 police officers are now dedicated to what Commander Steve Rodhouse said was a “painstaking” investigation that centres on how they met and what happened between them. “We believe that two of the victims met the male suspect in London through a shared political ideology,” he said. “They lived together at an address that you could effectively call a ‘collective’.

“Somehow that collective came to an end and the women ended up continuing to live with the suspects. How this resulted in the women living in this way for over 30 years is what are seeking to establish. “However, we believe emotional and physical abuse has been a feature of all the victims’ lives. “The people involved, the nature of that collective and how it operated is all subject to our investigation and we are slowly and painstakingly piecing together more information. I will not give any further information about it.”

He said the 30-year-old victim, who is believed to have lived with the two suspects and the other two victims all her life, had a birth certificate. “That is all the official documentation we can find,” he said. The woman is said to be intelligent and able to read and write, but had no formal education. The exact relationships between all five have not been disclosed.

The ground floor flat that the five lived in, on Peckford Place, on the Angell Town council estate in Stockwell, south London, was still under police guard last night while a door-to-door investigation was carried out. The block was built only five years ago, so the three women will have lived at other addresses over the 30-year period being examined by detectives. It is owned by Lambeth council. Nobody from the authority was available for comment yesterday. However the occupants had gone to some lengths to maintain their privacy, not registering on the electoral roll and keeping their windows covered by net curtains. However, one neighbour suggested they were “nosy” residents who had spoken often to the police.

Looked nice

The man, Marius, said: “I don’t think they were imprisoned, because they looked nice.

“They were in second-hand clothes but they were looked after second-hand clothes. They came out of the house every day. “They talked to the police, I have actually seen them talk to police. They are the nosy neighbours of the area, they talk to police not to people.”

One resident, who did not want to be named, said there seemed to have been a peculiar relationship between the occupants of the flat. “I thought the elderly couple were looking after the others, as if they were carers,” he said. “But there was something strange about it all. “The older couple were definitely the ones in charge, they were the dominant ones, you could tell that. “The young girl was very quiet and would not say very much. She was very pretty. I have to say the older couple were very polite.”

It was also claimed last night that a man who lived above the ground floor flat had received “love letters”, apparently from the 30-year-old. The man, said to have at least one child with his partner, had not replied to the letters but had kept some of them. Another resident, who would only give her name as Sophie, described how she noticed one of the women being pushed in a wheelchair by another of the occupants of the house three weeks ago. One man said he had seen a woman in her 30s, who appeared to be of Indian origin, entering the house on at least two occasions in recent months. “She looked completely normal,” said Jose Pereira, 54, a cook. “She was wearing a headscarf and just went into the flat on the times that I saw her.”

The rescue was staged after the 57-year-old woman secretly gained access to a telephone and contacted Freedom Charity, which works with victims of enforced labour. She first contacted them on October 18. Following negotiations over a week, the three women left the property on October 25 when the two elder occupants of the house were out. They were moved to a safe location where they have been receiving specialist help.

Earlier, police said the women had been “brainwashed” because of the fear instilled in them by their captors. One officer said they had been held by “invisible handcuffs”. It is not yet known how the five occupants are related.

The Malaysian government said yesterday it had been denied access to the 69-year-old victim. Anifah Aman, the Malaysian foreign minister, said his government had made contact with Scotland Yard “because we want to help”. However, its offer was rejected after the suspected captive told detectives she did not want them to disclose any details of her identity to anybody. “I’m not sure whether she went there for work or as a student, if she’s a citizen there,” she said. “We only know she was originally from Malaysia but we don’t know if she has [British] citizenship or permanent residency or if she was an illegal immigrant.”

The two alleged captors were arrested on Thursday and questioned but have since been released on police bail until January. Bags of evidence have been removed from their house. Commander Rodhouse said nobody had reported the three victims missing to police between they day they left the house and the day of the arrests. The three women are now being cared for elsewhere and receiving help from the Freedom Charity, which they first contacted to tell of their ordeal. It organised their rescue by the police. Aneeta Prem is the founder of the charity, which last year received a £10,000 grant from the Foreign Office for its work on forced marriage. She said: “We have seen an extraordinary rise in calls to our helpline since the rescue of the three women came into the public domain. We received five times as many calls in 24 hours as we normally do in one week and are needing to increase our resources to cope with this extra demand. “These women have had traumatic and disturbing experiences, which they have revealed to us. “What needs to happen now is that the three victims, who have begun a long process of recovery, are able to go through their rehabilitation undisturbed, without being identified.”