Last updated at 11:53, Tuesday, 24 April 2012

A Carlisle curry house boss hounded young girls for sex and tried to recruit six vulnerable child prostitutes while running a brothel in Botchergate, a court heard.

Azad Miah

Azad Miah, 44, who ran The Spice of India, is said to have “stalked” girls to have sex for money. Many of the girls were addicted to drugs or had troubled pasts and backgrounds.

A jury at Carlisle Crown Court was told he also paid regularly for the sexual services of a girl over a four-year period from when she was aged 14.

At Carlisle Crown Court yesterday prosecutor Tim Evans said the case was “a cold, clinical, calculated exploitation of the desperate and the vulnerable”.

Miah, who also ran takeaways in Cockermouth and Whitehaven, is charged with eight counts of paying for the sexual services of a child. The offences are said to have taken place between 2005 and 2009 when the girl was aged between 14 and 17. He is also charged with eight counts of inciting child prostitution. These offences involving six different girls – aged between 12 and 16 – are said to have taken place between 2007 and 2011. He also faces one charge of keeping a brothel at the Spice of India takeaway.

He denies all the charges.

Mr Evans said: “This is a case in which the defendant sought to persuade a variety of young girls – some of whom he knew were under 16 – to have sex with him for money or the equivalent of money via the provision of drugs and or drink. Those requests were either made face to face when girls came into or were working in his takeaway shop [The Spice of India] or were made by telephone calls or texts.

“The attempted persuasion was persistent – he would hound young girls for weeks, months – face to face and over the phone. More worryingly he would stalk some of them, following them home in particular. Some girls did indeed have sex with him for money.

Mr Evans told the jury of six men and six women: “Other witnesses will tell you that The Spice of India was a place they attended and had sex with men, including Miah, for money.

“In essence therefore the premises not only operated as a takeaway restaurant but also operated as a brothel being a location where women attended and prostituted themselves. Miah told one of the girls that ‘young girls were better depending on how many people they had slept with’.

“He said that sex with young girls was better and for him it was more of a thrill.”

Miah, who lives on Warwick Road, described himself as “a sex addict who would not refuse any woman who wanted to have sex with him,” although he said he would not have interest in a child which he defined as under 18.

He suggested that all those who had given evidence against him were drug users who had got together and concocted stories. All the complaints against him were “nonsense”, he said.

When police showed him photographs of some of the complainants he did accept that he knew some of them. He denied having sex with young girls or approaching them to have sex with him.

He denied The Spice of India was used for paid sex.

The trial continues. 

First published at 16:52, Monday, 23 April 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk