A CABBIE who was sacked for groping a pregnant passenger has been jailed for three years for grabbing a 14-year-old schoolgirl in the street and dragging her towards his car while threatening to rape her.

Qamar Zaman, 40, seized the child by the hips and demanded that she perform a sex act on him after following her in his car as she walked home from school, Bradford Crown Court heard.

In 2011, Zaman, of Florist Street, Stockbridge, Keighley, was dismissed by a private hire firm after sexually molesting a pregnant woman.

This week, he was convicted by a jury of sexually assaulting the teenage girl who was walking along the street where he lives.

The trial heard that Zaman pursued her in his car on December 14, 2015, and told her he would rape her one day.

She was frightened and tried to walk quickly away but Zaman got out of his vehicle and confronted her, prosecutor Jayne Beckett told jurors.

He grabbed her hips and pulled her towards his car, saying he wanted oral sex.

"She slipped from his grasp and ran home crying and upset," Mrs Beckett said.

Police were alerted and were taking the girl to the police station when she saw Zaman in the street and pointed him out to the officers as the man who molested her.

Zaman was arrested and taken into custody but continued to deny the offence.

Sentencing him yesterday, the judge Recorder Tahir Khan QC said: "You have not accepted any wrongdoing or shown any regret or remorse for what you did."

He continued: "So here you are, back before the crown court for another sexual assault on a female, this time a 14-year-old girl."

Recorder Khan said Zaman "represented a high risk of doing something like this again" and that character references saying he was a decent man were difficult to reconcile with the offence he had been convicted of.

Recorder Khan made an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order and Zaman was ordered to sign on the sex offender register without limit of time.

In mitigation, his barrister, Austin Newman, said Zaman had now lost his job as a takeaway delivery driver.

He was the father of two very young children and he suffered from depression and diabetes.

He cared for his elderly mother who had dementia.

Mr Newman said Zaman's poor English and health problems would make prison a particularly isolating place for him.

In March, 2011, Zaman, a married man, was sentenced to unpaid work for sexually assaulting the pregnant woman in his cab in the Keighley area in February 2010.

He denied the offence but was convicted by a jury after a retrial.

Zaman had rubbed the woman's stomach, moving his hand to the top of her jeans. He called her beautiful, grabbed her wrist and kissed her on the cheek.

He was sacked by the private hire firm he worked for and the court heard he would not get another cab driver's licence with the conviction on his record.