THE JURY has begun considering its verdict in the trial of a Bradford barber accused of sexually assaulting a girl aged ten in the hairdressing shop where he was working alone.

Judge Peter Hunt sent the panel home at 4.15 yesterday and they were resuming their deliberations this morning.

Mohammed Abid, 49, of Dickens Street, West Bowling, Bradford, denies a charge of sexually assaulting a child under 13 on the afternoon of Boxing Day, 2014.

He told the jury at Bradford Crown Court yesterday the girl smiled and waved at him before inviting herself into Sabir’s Hairdresser on Whetley Lane, Bradford.

Abid, who was assisted in the witness box by an Urdu interpreter, said he had worked at the shop five days a week for three years.

He did an eight hour day, cutting both men and women’s hair, but he had never seen the girl before.

She had not been to the shop to have her hair cut and he had not given a lolly to her the previous summer when she was setting on the step outside.

“I do not know her, not at all,” he said.

He and the girl had spoken to one another in English, he said.

Abid told the court he give her a lolly from a jar meant for child customers but pushed her out of the shop when she went towards a desk with his razors and scissors on it.

“She sat on a chair and started messing with it,” he said.

“I asked ‘Is there anyone accompanying you?’ and she said ‘I am on my own’.”

When she moved towards his razors and scissors, he feared she might harm herself.

Abid said he shouted: “Go home. Go home,” and pushed her with both hands out of the shop.

He never touched her sexually and knew it would be very wrong to do so.

He said the girl did not appear to be upset when she left the shop.

Abid said he made no comment when interviewed by the police later that day because his lawyer advised him to say nothing.

Prosecutor Michael Smith alleges that Abid knocked on the shop window and beckoned the girl inside.

He asked her why she wasn’t wearing a coat and wanted to know where she lived.

The girl says Abid touched her stomach under her top, put his hands down her trousers and then kissed her on the cheek.

The child, who was in the shop for under two minutes, told an older cousin and then her own mother what had happened.

Her mother told the jury her daughter was frightened and tearful.

Her brother confronted Abid with the allegation and the police were alerted. When Abid was arrested later that day, he asked the police: “Is it about the girl?”

The trial continues.