Mother-in-law 'kept her sons' three wives locked up like slaves or dogs for 13 years'

'Totally dominating': Naseebah Bibi, pictured outside Preston Crown Court, is accused of keeping her sons' wives as prisoners in her Blackburn home.

A mother locked up her three daughters-in-law and treated them as slaves for more than a decade, a court heard yesterday.

Naseebah Bibi, 62, is said to have ruled the women by fear - beating and slapping them if they disobeyed her, threatening to break their legs and denying them food.

Their ordeal only came to light when one wife managed to break free and ran into the street to alert a neighbour.

The court was told that Tazeem Akhtar, Nagina Akhtar and Nisbah Akhtar had arrived in Britain over several years after arranged marriages to Bibi's sons Nahim, Fahim and Nadeem in Pakistan.

Instead of living with their husbands and raising families, the women were put to work by their mother-in-law cooking and cleaning and using an industrial sewing machine.

Bibi, a mother of six, denies three charges of false imprisonment of the three women between 1993 and 2006.

Her son Nadeem, 31, denies falsely imprisoning his wife Nisbah between 2005 and 2007 and one count of actual bodily harm.

Philip Boyd, prosecuting, said: 'Mrs Bibi was clearly exploiting each of these women. They were treated like children, slaves or dogs by a regime of threats of force or actual force.

'These young women had been rejected by their husbands of their arranged marriages, they couldn't speak English, they couldn't go back to Pakistan, they were in limbo and so they were exploited by the defendant for her own purposes.'

Preston Crown Court heard that the first wife was Nagina Akhtar who had married her husband, Fahim in 1993.

The couple had three children, but she spent her days cleaning and making clothing on a sewing machine.

Mr Boyd said: 'As soon as she came to this country, she was ordered by Mrs Bibi to spend the day sewing on an industrial sewing machine.

'She sewed all day, every day. She sewed for money, but she didn't see any of the money.'

When she once left the small terraced house in Blackburn, Bibi warned her: 'How dare you leave the house. If you do it again I will break your legs.'

Mr Boyd told the court that Nagina was forced to live under these conditions for more than 13 years.

Isn't islam a great religion?