Police called to the scene of an alleged rape attempt in Keighley saw a woman sobbing on her knees in the street, a jury at Bradford Crown Court heard yesterday.

The area was cordoned off after “numerous calls” were made by nearby residents about an incident in the early hours of August 26 last year.

Mohammed Ansar, 33, of Highfield Road, Keighley, denies attempted rape and committing an offence with intent to commit a sexual offence.

His alleged victim, in her 30s, told the court she was walking home from a nightclub at about 2.30am when a man offered her a lift home and then tried to drag her into a car on Highfield Lane.

She told how she ran off, but was hit on the side of the head and pulled down a bank by her assailant who got on top of her and tried to pull down her knickers.

The woman said she crawled to safety after striking her attacker on the head with her shoe.

Her boyfriend then arrived and he and her assailant scuffled in the street.

Police officers summoned to the scene said they saw two men squaring up to one another in the middle of the road.

The woman was on her knees, very distressed and sobbing.

She was saying: “Why did he do that to me? He tried to rape me. He was going to rape me.”

The woman was wearing a black dress and bangles. She was barefoot and her shoes were not with her.

The jury was told she had a large bruise and a scratch on her leg and bruising to the inside of both her arms.

She was upset and traumatised by what she said had happened. Although she told officers she had had a drink, she did not appear to be drunk.

Ansar, who is assisted in court by a Punjabi interpreter, says the woman and her boyfriend were drunk and arguing in the road that night.

His case is that the other man dragged him from his car when he flashed his headlights at the couple.

The men scuffled in the street and Ansar was kicked and butted.

Jayne Beckett, Ansar’s barrister, put it to the woman that she lied about the rape attempt to stop her then boyfriend being prosecuted for assaulting the defendant.

She denied this.

The trial continues.