A woman was forced to kiss her ex-boyfriend’s shoe during a violent attack in the flat they shared, a court has heard.
The victim was left cowering in the common stairwell after allegedly being assaulted by Sheharyar Awan.
The woman told Perth Sheriff Court that she had been in a relationship with Awan from September 2015 until May. The alleged incident happened in July but they were still living in a shared flat.
She said the night before the incident she had been out with colleagues at the city’s Loft nightclub. She returned home at around 3am but said she was woken by Awan coming into her room at around 8am.
She said: “He came in and sat next to me – I was half asleep. He grabbed my throat and I woke up.”
She said she did not remember if Awan had said anything to her at this point.
She said she had tried to put on some trousers but the 21-year-old took them from her and proceeded to hit her with them.
“The next thing I remember I was on the floor,” she said. “He kicked me a couple of times in the back of my upper thigh. Then he took off his shoe and put it in my face and he told me to kiss it.”
Asked by fiscal depute Robbie Brown if this had any cultural significance she replied “I don’t know” but said she believed it was intended to “humiliate” her.
Solicitor David Holmes, defending, asked if she had provoked Awan by “getting in his face” and hurt him by grabbing his wrists.
The woman said he had been trying to calm Awan down and had grabbed his wrists in self-defence.
Awan, of South Shields, Tyne and Wear, denies acting in a threatening and abusive manner at an address in Perth’s South Street on July 16 this year. It is said that he shouted, swore, forced the woman to lick his shoe, emptied her handbag and prevented her from calling the police.
He further denies assaulting the woman by seizing her by the body, forcing her to the floor, kicking her strangling her and spitting at her.
The trial before Sheriff Gillian Wade continues.
