Father ‘ignored over fears for starving son’

Aftab Khan was giving evidence at the trial of Amanda Hutton, 43, who is accused of the manslaughter of her son Hamzah Khan by failing to feed him properly.

Hamzah’s body was discovered in a cot in Hutton’s Bradford home in September 2011 almost two years after he died.

Mr Khan told Bradford Crown Court how he had separated from Hutton after he was charged with assaulting her.

He said he was initially stopped from visiting Hutton due to a court order but did start to go and see his son when they moved in March 2009.

Mr Khan told the jury his former partner was not looking after Hamzah properly.

“I said ‘look at the state of him – you’re not looking after him’ and she told me to get out,” he told the jury.

The mechanic and taxi driver said his concerns about his son had led to the arguments resulting in his arrest in 2008 and eventual conviction for battery.

“She wasn’t bathing him,” he said. “She wasn’t changing him.”

Mr Khan told the court he would only see Hutton feeding Hamzah milk. He said his former partner drank cider and vodka heavily, especially after the death of her mother.

“She’d be absolutely out of it,” he said.

Mr Khan said he contacted social services once about the condition of Hamzah but claimed he was ignored.

The jury has heard how, when Mr Khan was arrested for attacking Hutton in 2008, he told police he was going to contact social services about his son.

A senior police officer told the court there was no record he ever made the call.

Yesterday Paul Greaney QC, prosecuting, asked Khan whether he did go ahead and contact social services.

He said: “I remember ringing social services up. They said it was a private matter. Social services are never bothered about cases like this.”

Mr Khan rejected claims he was a “wife batterer”.

Stephen Meadowcroft QC, defending, asked him: “You were a wife batterer and she was a battered wife, cowed by your violence.”

Mr Khan said: “If I was a wife batterer why am I not standing next to her [Hutton]?”

Mr Meadowcroft replied: “Perhaps you ought to be.”

Mr Khan insisted he tried to alert police and social services to his son’s plight but said he was ignored.

Deepinder Kaur told the court Hamzah was small and did not eat very much in the months before his death.

Miss Kaur, 24, a former girlfriend of Hutton’s son Qaiser, 22, said Hamzah would eat half a cheese and onion pasty in the evening and half a banana in the morning.

During the day he would eat “biscuits or whatever’s lying around”.

Miss Kaur said that despite being nearly four at the time, in February 2009, “he looked like a baby”.

“He was very light,” she said. “He didn’t weigh much.”

Asked where Hamzah spent his days, Miss Kaur said he was either in front of the TV in the living room or locked in a bedroom with the light turned off.

Asked whether Hutton explained why he was locked upstairs, she said: “She said it was because he’d been naughty. But she didn’t say exactly what he’d done.”

Pc Maria Furness told the jury she attended Hutton’s house to perform a welfare check but found Hamzah to be “fed well, clean, healthy looking and there was an appropriate adult in the address”.

The officer said that person was Tariq, Hamzah’s brother, who told her he was his uncle.

Pc Furness said she was at the house for about 30 to 45 minutes when she made the visit about eight months before Hamzah’s death. Hutton denies manslaughter. The trial continues.