Worried police have been granted a rarely-used Court order to protect women from a Bradford sadist who tortured one of his girlfriends with a blowtorch.

Andrew Delsol is due to be freed from prison in January after serving an eight-year sentence for subjecting another teenage girl to almost a week of terror.

That came less than three years after he was released from a 15-year jail term for the blowtorch attack on his previous lover.

Lancashire Police have now successfully applied for a Violent Offender Order against Delsol, formerly of Arum Street, Little Horton, because of concerns about his behaviour while out on licence and living at a hostel in Blackburn.

He was spotted arm-in-arm with a female in the town centre in 2008. Delsol, 45, had kept the relationship with the 25-year-old woman a secret from his supervising officer.

Inquiries had revealed he had physically assaulted the woman. He was recalled to prison to serve the rest of his sentence and is now due to be released on January 18.

Detective Constable Lisa Jeffrey, of the Lancashire Constabulary Public Protection Unit, said as well as the relationship with a Blackburn woman Delsol had made contact with two previous victims.

Under the terms of an interim Violent Offender Order, Delsol will have to make his whereabouts known to the police.

He is also banned from contacting the three women and from entering Blackburn town centre where the 25-year-old woman works.

Det Con Jeffrey said: “We regard him as posing a very serious risk to the three women and to the general public.

“He feels he has been wrongly convicted and he has not taken advantage of any help while in prison. When he is released he will pose a real and serious threat to the public, especially young females.”

Delsol was sentenced to eight years in August, 2002 after telling his teenage girlfriend that he would dismember her as he held her captive.

He was jailed by a Carlisle Crown Court judge after admitting false imprisonment, wounding with intent, two assaults and making a threat to kill.

In October, 1989 Delsol was jailed for 15 years at Sheffield Crown Court for brutal offences against Rebekah Binns, formerly of Bradford.

He held her captive in an attic where he beat her with a stick, burned her body with a blowtorch and allegedly tried to make her drink bleach. He twice forced her out of the attic window with a rope around her neck.

At the time he was on bail and awaiting trial for a sadistic attack on his previous girlfriend, Nicola Thornton, while living in Bradford.

He was jailed at Leeds Crown Court for two years nine months for a string of assaults on Miss Thornton over a five-year period, including fracturing her skull.

The Violent Offender Order is only the third sought by police under the Criminal Justice Act 2008.