A MAN accused of murdering his girlfriend laid a ‘false trail’ in an attempt to cover up his crime, a jury heard yesterday.

Naveed Naeem withdrew money from a cash machine in Hull using Sabira Alam’s bank card after killing her, prosecuting barrister Rodney Jameson QC told Bradford Crown Court yesterday.

Naeem, 30, from New Street, Milnsbridge, denies murdering Miss Alam, 20, of Vernon Avenue, Greenhead.

Miss Alam’s body was found on moorland off the A640 at Buckstones on April 5.

Closing the case for the prosecution Mr Jameson told jurors Naeem had been ‘emptying’ Miss Alam’s bank account from a cash dispenser in Hull before driving to Manchester – the day after she was last seen alive on CCTV.

Mr Jameson said: “He is trying to lay a false trail to say: ‘look someone has taken money out of her account when I was in Manchester.’

“What other explanation is there to drive from Huddersfield to Hull and then drive to Manchester that day?”

Describing how Naeem’s phone had been picked up on April 2 at sites near to where Miss Alam’s body was discovered three days later, Mr Jameson said: “That’s not the route the defendant takes to Huddersfield. So what is he doing on the A640 so close to where Sabira Alam’s body is found at night?”

Mr Jameson added two bags packed with clothes, a passport and condoms had been found at Naeem’s address following his arrest.

He said: “Why were these bags packed?

“How can it conceivably be that all these matters be as they are if he did not kill Sabira?”

Explaining how Miss Alam had been strangled from behind Mr Jameson looked towards Naeem in the dock and said: “This man couldn’t face her when he killed her and he couldn’t face her family or you (the jury).”

But in the defence’s closing speech counsel Bryan Cox QC said the prosecution’s case was an ‘unfair, speculative and dangerous’ ‘scatter bomb’.

Mr Cox said: “We say some of the points they (the prosecution) have taken are demonstrably unfair, speculative and dangerous...

“We don’t say there is no suspicion. There clearly is. But we do say, hand on heart, that this case does not go far enough.

“You cannot be sure on this evidence that this man, who had no motive to kill this girl, killed her.”

Mr Cox added Naeem had suffered family problems and had been prone to driving aimlessly.

Yesterday Judge James Stewart QC began his summing up speech.

The case continues.