A school governor accused of trying to intimidate a 13-year-old girl into dropping a sex allegation against her husband told a jury he was the last person she would want to help.

Bradford Crown Court was told the teenager claimed Shabir Ahmed had indecently assaulted her. His wife Shammen Akhtar is accused, along with his girlfriend Barbara McMeekin, of putting pressure on the girl to drop the charge. But Akhtar, 27, of Belgrave Road, Keighley, said she had suffered an unhappy marriage and that Ahmed was a "nasty husband".

"He has been having affairs," she said. "He has been doing bad things to me since the day he came. I never helped him out."

She said she would be quite happy if he was out of her life.

Akhtar, a governor at Guard House Primary School in Keighley, is alleged to have picked up the teenager, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, on West Lane in Keighley.

The girl claimed that when she got in the car Akhtar tried to intimidate her into dropping the case, saying: "Just tell the police you're sick and tired of them messing you around."

But mother-of-three Akhtar told the jury yesterday it was the teenager who was putting pressure on her. She said: "She was saying, 'I want to drop the case and my dad's going to kill me.' And she said, 'Do you know any people that would be able to kill my dad?' I was just shocked."

She was asked by her barrister Michelle Colborne: "Did you put pressure on her to drop the case?"

"No. At that stage I did not know that she was the girl that got attacked," Akhtar replied.

McMeekin, 19, of Gaythorpe Street, Great Horton, Bradford is alleged to have been in the car and joined in the intimidation. She declined to give evidence.

It had been alleged both had also intimidated the girl on the day before the car incident last March, but the Honorary Recorder of Bradford, Judge Stephen Gullick, told the jury he would instruct them to return not guilty verdicts on this as he felt there was no case to answer.

The women have pleaded not guilty to the second charge of intimidation and the jury is expected to return its verdict later today.