ROBBINSVILLE, NJ - Two homes that officials charged had been illegally converted to house dozens of volunteers who worked at one of the largest Hindu temples in the world have been ordered vacated by Robbinsville officials, who deemed the structures unsafe.

The existence of one of the makeshift rooming houses came to light after EMTs were called there shortly after 9 p.m. on March 15 to respond to a medical emergency. Offiicials said they found dangerously high levels of carbon monoxide inside in the large, two-story farmhouse on North Main Street in Robbinsville — less than a mile from the temple erected by Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, a prominent Hindu sect known as BAPS.

It was later found that a tankless water heater installed to accommodate the 33 women staying there had a dislodged PVC vent pipe that allowed lethal odorless and colorless gas to leak into the basement.

According to the police department report, they also found “many points of egress” in the house had been blocked, with one door screwed shut into the fame. Another had two planks of wood mounted across it, preventing the door from being opened.

“It could have been really bad,” said Robbinsville Mayor David L. Fried. “My biggest concern is if proper construction method were not followed, there is a very good possibility we would have been facing multiple fatalities.”

On Monday, a second house officials say was also tied to BAPS — with sleeping accommodations for 22 people — was similarly the focus of a township inspection over issues of alleged code violations.

The discovery of the illegal construction was first reported by MidJersey.News and confirmed by public records requests of police and fire department reports.

A lawsuit in federal court accused the leaders of BAPS of luring and exploiting people from India to work on the project, paying them little and housing them in trailers tucked away on the property in Robbinsville. Attorneys for the sect later disclosed that a federal criminal investigation into alleged human trafficking was underway.

The houses targeted by Robbinsville did not involve foreign workers, but rather volunteers from around this country, said attorneys.

Paul Fishman of Arnold & Porter in Newark, a former U.S. Attorney who represents BAPS, said both houses were owned by BAPS devotees “who offer free housing to those who come from across the country” to volunteer at the mandir and then return home.

“That form of seva, or service, is the essence of the faith of the BAPS community. BAPS is inspecting all such devotee-owned housing and will make sure that owners address all matters of concern,” said Paul Fishman of Arnold & Porter in Newark.

Adam Garcia with Giordano Halleran & Ciesla in Red Bank, who represents the owner of the property on Voelbel Road, said no enforcement citations have been received, but acknowledged that the township posted a notice on the door declaring the house “an unsafe structure” that had to be immediately vacated. He, too, described the occupants of the house as BAPS volunteers “who resided there as part of their volunteerism.”

The home itself was immaculate, Garcia added, with “no identifiable condition that would render it unsafe for occupancy.”

Pictures included with the violation notices for the house on North Main Street showed rooms crammed with multiple cots, with more than a dozen in one paneled room. More cots could be seen in another, all with folded blankets and pillows.

The owners, a Baltimore-based limited liability construction company named for the late Pramukh Swami Maharaj, who was the guru of BAPS, were ordered to immediately vacate the structure, which was cited as an unapproved boarding house, unpermitted and uninspected construction work, and the absence of smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, records show.

The second house was located on Voelbel Road in Robbinsville, where multiple sources said the FBI were on the scene on Monday morning. An FBI spokeswoman said she could not comment on whether agents were in fact there.

The mayor said the township “will be obtaining and executing warrants” for any other houses found to being similarly used.

According to the civil complaint, which is still pending, they were forced to work long hours for very little pay, suffering violations of their employment and civil rights. The workers said they were instructed when seeking visas to tell U.S. Embassy staff that they would be doing decorative painting or carving work on stones to be used in the Robbinsville temple. In fact, the vast majority if not all of the stone carving work for the Robbinsville temple was performed in India and the marble was then shipped to New Jersey, the lawsuit said.

Instead, their tasks involved cutting and laying stonework, removing garbage, doing road work, dipping the carved stones in chemicals, and performing other tasks, according to the complaint.

According to their court filings, the workers said upon arrival to the U.S., BAPS representatives allegedly confiscated their passports and visas, even before they had left the airport. While they were told they would be working four to seven hours per day and work 20 to 25 days per month, instead they worked from 6:30 a.m. — when a siren would awaken them from “the crowded trailers” they slept in — until 7:30 p.m., seven days a week. The workers could go up to 40 days straight without a day off, according to the lawsuit.

They were paid approximately 31,000 to 35,000 rupees a month, or about $425 to $450. Of that total pay, approximately $50 would be paid to them in cash and the rest was credited to their bank accounts in India once a month “so they would not have the financial means to escape their forced labor,” the complaint said.

Infractions of work rules would result in their pay being docked by supervisors, the lawsuit alleged. One worker, Mohan Lal, allegedly “died while he was subjected to forced labor at the temple,” according to the lawsuit, which said at least three other former BAPS workers died in India shortly after leaving the United States.

The lawsuit remains in play. No criminal charges have yet been brought.

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