A judge has stopped the trial of a 29-year-old man accused of attacking two brothers with a baseball bat outside a Bradford takeaway.

Judge Peter Benson today directed the jury hearing the case against Patrick Martin to find him not guilty on charges of causing grievous bodily harm with intent and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

The prosecution had alleged that Mr Martin, of Thornton Road, Bradford, struck Stewart Wilkinson and his brother Peter with the bat during an early-hours incident outside Ravi's Takeaway.

But at the end of the prosecution case, Judge Benson expressed his concern about the reliability of the evidence given by the brothers and Stewart Wilkinson's wife, Patricia.

The judge told the jury that mobile phone footage taken by a bystander which captured part of the incident was "considerably at odds" with the accounts given by the principal witnesses.

He added that the case depended entirely on the credibility of the Wilkinsons and he was also concerned about the admitted heavy consumption of alcohol by the three main prosecution witnesses.

Judge Benson stressed that nothing he had said should be taken as suggesting that any of the Wilkinsons had deliberately lied and he noted that Peter Wilkinson appeared to be genuinely shocked when he was shown the phone footage in court.

He said the charges faced by Martin were very serious ones and he took the view that the safest and proper course was to direct the jury to return not guilty verdicts.