A 24-year-old man acted in “frustration or anger” when he deliberately fractured his baby daughter’s skull and broke her ribs and ankle, a Crown Court jury has been told.

The father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is on trial in Bradford accused of four offences of unlawfully and maliciously causing grievous bodliy harm to the little girl with intent to do her serious injury.

He pleads not guilty to all the charges.

Prosecutor Matthew Bean told the jury yesterday it was the Crown’s case that the man deliberately caused a number of serious injuries to his daughter when she was under three months old.

She was taken by her mother and grandmother to Bradford Royal Infirmary on December 28, 2010, and found to have a fractured skull, three fractured ribs and a broken ankle.

The little girl’s skull was fractured across the whole of its left side.

“It was caused by an impact with a hard, blunt or flat object with sufficient force to break the bone,” said Mr Bean.

Doctors also found a healing fracture to a rib, caused three to six weeks earlier.

Mr Bean said the baby and her mother were living at the time with the defendant in the Bolton Woods area of Bradford.

On December 28, the child’s mother and grandmother left him in charge of his daughter for an hour and a half. When they returned that afternoon, the baby had a swelling to her head.

The court heard that the man told his cousin he had tripped and fallen while carrying her.

Mr Bean said a high degree of force was needed break a baby’s ribs. Such an injury was often caused by squeezing the chest.

The left ankle was fractured by “a twisting and pulling force,” he said.

Mr Bean told the court it was the Crown’s case that inexperienced handling of a baby would not cause such injuries.

Addressing jurors, Mr Bean said: “The key issue in this case, you may think, is how these injuries were caused.”

He continued: “The prosecution will say that, whether out of frustration or anger, he (the defendant) caused all these injuries deliberately.”

The girl’s mother wept in court when she told the jury she was “distraught” to learn her baby had suffered a fractured skull.

She told how her daughter had let out “an horrific, blood-curdling scream” a couple of weeks earlier when the man was looking after her downstairs in the early hours.

She ran to her but she seemed fine.

The trial continues.