Bradford-born Shafilea Ahmed’s teacher saw injuries which the teenager claimed were caused in a “beating” from her parents, a Court heard yesterday.

Joanne Code said Shafilea also ran away from home and said she would not go back because “they are going to marry me off in Pakistan”.

The teenager’s parents, Iftikhar, 52, and Farzana, 49, are accused of murdering Shafilea at home in Warrington, Cheshire, in September 2003.

Mrs Code, who taught Shafilea at Great Sankey High School, told the jury at Chester Crown Court the teenager was a “very good student”.

The teacher said: “Shafilea wanted to be a barrister – that was her dream, that was her ambition. She was exceptionally keen to go to university.”

Little more than a month after she joined the sixth form, Shafilea was absent from school and Mrs Code telephoned the family home and spoke to Mr Ahmed. She told the jury she was “surprised” when he said Shafilea wanted to leave college and “burn her books”.

She asked to speak directly to Shafilea, who was put on the phone and told only to answer “yes” or “no”.

Mrs Code added: “I asked whether or not I needed to be worried about her welfare – which she replied ‘Yes’.”

The next day the teenager returned to school and went to see Mrs Code.

“She came in and she had bruising to her neck and a cut on her lip.”

She added: “She told me her mother and father had beaten her and that they had taken it in turns to do so.”

The teacher said Shafilea was “adamant” she did not want social services to become involved but the situation was monitored.

Shafilea did remain at the school but the following month ran away from home. She was found “shivering” in a park by a friend.

Mrs Code told the court in a meeting, which was arranged with social services and her parent, Shafilea spoke “quite openly” about her lack of freedom. She said: “By the end of the meeting Mr Ahmed had agreed she would be allowed more freedom and she seemed happy.”

But the following February Mrs Code said she learned that the teenager had run away again, this time to Blackburn, to be with a man called “Mushi”.

She added: “She said she wasn’t going home and when I asked why, she said, ‘They’re going to marry me off in Pakistan’. She refused to go home.”

Shafilea disappeared in September 2003 and her body was found on the bank of the River Kent in Cumbria the following February. The prosecution claim she was killed by her parents because of her “Western” ways.

The couple, of Liverpool Road, Warrington, deny murder.