A student who protected a pet shop owner and a pregnant woman from the baying mob during the heat of the Bradford riots has been given a reduced prison sentence.

Mudasar Khan was told that he deserved two years in jail for hurling a piece of rubble towards police lines during the troubles, but a judge yesterday decided to reduce that by half after hearing how the 21-year-old intervened to stop pet shop owner Pete Booth being attacked.

Mr Booth told the city's crown court how he feared for his premises in Sunbridge Road, his teenage daughter and a work colleague when the violence erupted last July.

And he told how Khan and other Asian youths had stood guard in the doorway of his business.

Mr Booth, who has run the pet shop for 32 years, said it was a scene of "pandemonium'' as he and his colleague tried to drag bird stands and other equipment back into the shop.

But he said Khan and the other youths ran over to help.

"As we were getting the last things in the shop it was absolutely chaotic," he said.

"This gentleman and about four other youths stood across the front of my door. They were protecting myself, the man who works for me and my shop. The were stopping them coming through...they (the rioters) could have destroyed the shop.

"They were all putting their arms up and saying: 'Stop, this is stupid'.''

Mr Booth estimated that Khan and others were outside his shop for about ten or 15 minutes and he described how Khan and another youth then went to the aid of a pregnant woman and a female shopper who were caught up in the violence.

"I asked this gentleman and another lad to bring the two ladies into the shop... which they did.''

Khan was then said to have escorted the pregnant woman out of the shop with the aid of police officers when she began breathing erratically and panicked.

When he was asked by Khan's barrister what would have happened if he and the other youths had not been there Mr Booth replied: "My shop would have been absolutely annihilated."

The court heard that a couple of hours after that incident Khan, of Heaton Road, Manningham, was captured on police video footage throwing a piece of rubble towards police lines during a confrontation in the Infirmary Fields area.

His barrister Sean Morris said Khan was a diligent, hard-working young man who had brought about his own downfall by an act of "crass stupidity that took seconds."

"Having done that, he acted in a way that he immediately realised was wrong and stupid and he left,'' said Mr Morris.

Khan, a second-year design student at Calderdale College, handed himself in to police after his photo was published in the Telegraph & Argus and he pleaded guilty to the charge of violent disorder when he appeared before Bradford magistrates.

Mr Morris described Khan's situation as "wholly exceptional'' in relation to other riot offences and he argued that he could be given a suspended jail sentence.

Although he expressed some doubt about whether Mr Booth had correctly identified Khan as the man who helped to protect his shop, Judge Roger Scott accepted that the actions had been highly commendable.

"I take the view you should have your sentence reduced because of that commendable conduct by you towards Mr Booth, those associated with him and the two ladies,'' said Judge Scott.