A WOMAN suspected of a being part of a conspiracy to squirt acid on a three-year-old boy told police she was only 'loitering' outside a Worcester school to make a Muslim woman 'jealous'.

Police interviews of seven people suspected of a conspiracy to attack a boy with sulphuric acid in Home Bargains in Worcester were read out to a jury at Worcester Crown Court on Tuesday. Martina Badiova, Norbert Pulko and Saied Hussini were photographed by suspicious locals loitering outside a city school on July 13 last year, eight days before the boy suffered acid burns at Home Bargains in Tallow Hill, Worcester. The prosecution say Pulko backed out of the earlier attack on the boy because there were too man people outside the school. The alleged attack took place on Saturday, July 21 last year. CCTV shows 27-year-old Adam Cech squirting something on the boy. Prosecution say the alleged attack and the aborted attack were orchestrated by the child's 40-year-old Afghan father who cannot be identified for legal reasons. The background is said to be the father's ongoing civil dispute with his estranged wife over the custody of their children. Cech answered 'no comment' to all questions put to him by police.

Former casino worker Badiova, aged 22, of Newcombe Road, Birmingham, the last suspect to be arrested, was interviewed by police on August 23 last year. She accepted she was outside the Worcester school but said of her presence there: "He (Pulko) was telling me he has got a girlfriend, partner, wife and she has a boyfriend and is making him really, really jealous and really sad. He was asking me if I could help him to make his wife or girlfriend jealous. He was hugging me and telling me to kiss him."

Badiova told officers she did not know this woman's name but added: "He just said she was a Muslim."

She said Pulko was to pay her £200 for the work but had not yet done so. Badiova told officers she had not seen Pulko wearing a surgical glove in the black Vauxhall Astra when parked outside the school.

Jan Dudi, one of three men to enter Home Bargains on the day of the alleged attack, said: "I did not see what was going on. I did not see what was happening there."

The 25-year-old of Cranbrook Road, Birmingham, said Cech had been in the shop looking for a toilet after the Sat Nav froze and they took 'a wrong turn' off the motorway and ended up in Worcester. He said of the attack: "I didn't have anything to do with this."

Pulko, 22, of Sutherland Road, London, also captured on CCTV in the Worcester shop said: "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Jabar Paktia, 42, of New Hampton Road, Wolverhampton told police: "I would not dream of harming a woman and a baby."

The Afghan accepted he had let the child's father use his mobile phone. "I told him to use my phone without thinking this man capable of using me or framing me" he said in his interview.

Hussini, aged 42, of Wrottesley Road, London, issued a prepared statement which read: "I had no intention at any time to harm the child."

The trial continues.