POLICE disguised as Avon ladies rescued a woman kept a virtual prisoner by relatives for five years, a court was told.

The operation began after a note pleading for help was left in a women’s lavatory at a department store. Riffat Pasha, 36, was desperate to escape from her violent husband and his domineering family, Sheffield Crown Court was told. She had been beaten and her life threatened by her husband, Aamer Pasha, 38, who, with his mother and sister, had made her life “entirely miserable ”.

Mrs Pasha’s note was found by a member of the public, who called the police. Two women officers visited the family’s home in the Firth Park area of Sheffield. Mr Pasha answered the door and the officers pretended to be selling perfume, handing over a cosmetics company’s brochure.

They returned when Mr Pasha, a taxi driver, was out. Although his 60-year-old mother, Naeem, was there, the police found Mrs Pasha and talked to her. They helped her to leave with her two children and took them to a safe house.

Mrs Pasha, a university graduate, told the court that she came to Britain in 1999 after an arranged marriage in Pakistan. She was not allowed to leave the home on her own, was locked in when the rest of the family were out and was not allowed to telephone her family in Pakistan.

Her mother-in-law was said to have accused Mrs Pasha of eating too much, and to have placed a lock on the kitchen door. The women argued daily about housework. Mrs Pasha said that when she complained to her husband he began kicking and punching her. She said that his mother watched the attack, urging her son to “hit the bitch more”.

Mrs Pasha senior intervened only when Mr Pasha, also a university graduate, grabbed a carving knife and threatened to “finish her off”, his wife said. She said that her husband had shouted: “I will put you six feet down in the yard if you make my mother angry again.”

She added: “My parents didn’t know where I was. Nobody knew about me. He could kill me and no one would know.” She said that on the same evening she saw her husband hiding a knife under his pillow.

Allison Dorrell, for the prosecution, said that when Mrs Pasha told her husband that she wanted to end the marriage, he again threatened her and said: “I won’t let you out of here alive. Only your body can go back to Pakistan.”

The court was told that in July 2004 Mrs Pasha left the note in the women’s lavatory at Atkinsons department store in Sheffield. She wrote on the envelope, begging whoever found it to deliver it to the police or to a doctor who treated her for tuberculosis in hospital.

Cross-examined by Andrew Fitzpatrick, for Mr Pasha, Mrs Pasha denied that she had arrived in England expecting to enjoy a luxurious lifestyle.

Mr Pasha denies falsely imprisoning his wife, threatening to kill her and assault causing actual bodily harm. His mother denies false imprisonment and assault. His sister, Tahsin Pasha, 34, a teacher, denies false imprisonment.

The trial continues.

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