The Cult Next Door: BBC2 documentary tells story of Brixton-based cult The Collective and leader Aravindan Balakrishnan

Three women emerged in 2013 after being held in South London for several decades
Horrifying story: Katy reveals her upbringing in a Brixton cult in shocking BBC documentary
BBC/Perry Images
Ben Travis27 January 2017

Brainwashing, cult leaders, and captivity are such outlandish and chilling notions that they can feel alien to our world – but the reality that it could happen anywhere crashed in when a cult was discovered in Brixton in 2013.

Three women, members of The Collective, emerged from a South London flat after being held for several decades under the spell of cult leader Aravindan Balakrishnan.

One of them was Balakrishnan’s own daughter Katy, literally born into the cult by one of its members and with very little knowledge of the outside world.

She was raised collectively by the group not knowing who her parents were, with a birth name which translated as Love Revolution.

Cult leader Aravindan Balakrishnan
BBC/Public Domain

It’s a horrifying true story, and one which is cleanly and empathetically explored in the BBC’s documentary The Cult Next Door.

Filmmaker Vanessa Engle charts the story of The Collective, and how Balakrishnan’s left-leaning Maoist group became a prison for its members as time went on.

“When I first heard this strange and intriguing story, I wanted to discover how this could have happened right under our noses in the heart of London,” Engle says.

“It’s only now, three years after the women emerged from captivity that I’ve been able to piece together a full account of this extraordinary story.”

There are sad and disturbing details on how he scared his followers into staying, and the eccentric idea of ‘Jackie’, the murderous mind-control machine that Comrade Bala claimed caused natural disasters as punishment for his followers’ misdeeds.

Engle’s documentary is fascinating and shocking in equal measure, full of tragic human details.

BBC Two, 9pm

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