Theresa Gomes and her two daughters climb into a car, their eyes vacant. This is the first time they are leaving their house in seven years.

Frances Gomes was convinced that if his daughters left his flat in Vasai, they would be raped. Or "corrupted". So he kept 27-year-old Barbara and 21-year-old Elizabeth locked up with their mother in this Mumbai suburb.

The three women sit with their heads bowed, but say little. Barbara cannot control her neck movements, the result of a severe beating, one of many, by her father. A visit inside their flat shows a fridge with a chain around it. Gomes decided when his family would eat. The windows have huge deadbolts. When he left the house, he'd slam them shut.

That guaranteed that his neighbours had no interaction with his family. All that was known about Gomes was this: That he was unemployed, and that he lived off the money he'd made from selling a flat.

Then, on Tuesday, whispering through a peephole, Theresa managed to catch the attention of a neighbour. A local NGO arrived soon after to Vasai's House of Horrors.

Francis Gomes was beaten up by angry locals. But his family has not asked for any action against him. "They came to us saying that they wanted the NGO to rehabilitate them. But they did not register a complaint against the accused," says Ashok Pawar, a senior officer at the Manickpur Police Station.

Gomes insists he has done nothing wrong. A slight man with silver hair, he dares, "Bring me face-to-face with my wife and ask her then to explain if I mistreated her." He has this to fall back upon: Two months ago, his third daughter managed to escape with the help of another NGO. Her trauma is so deep that she has never asked those who rescued her to go back for her mother and sisters.