A MAN accused of indecently assaulting two boys in the 1980s and 1990s was not in Lancashire at the time the offences are all-eged to have happened, a jury was told.

And the barrister acting for Nazir Master, 46, from Blackburn, said the alleg-ed victims ‘got their heads together’ to ruin Master’s reputation because he was ‘bi-curious’.

Master, of Langham Road, denies four counts of ind-ecent assault, in relation to two victims, and is on trial at Preston Crown Court. The prosecution all- eged the tax specialist used ‘ploys’ to get the youngsters to go into his house, where he assaulted them.

But Christopher Diamond, for Master, told the jury there were discrepancies in witnesses’ evidence.

He claimed the alleged victims had made up the allegations.

Mr Diamond told jurors: “The difficulty with lies is they are harder to rem-ember than the truth. You will appreciate that being gay and Muslim is a very serious sin. There are people in this world who are put to death for being homos-exual.”

He asked the jury to consider whether the com- plainants had come for-ward because they had ‘some sort of hatred’ for Master, resulting in them getting together and creat- ing a ‘plot’.

The barrister added that his client was working in London at the time of some of the alleged offences, and only rarely visited Blackburn.

Nick Kennedy, prosecut-ing, said the two alleged victims’ accounts were very similar. He told the court: “The pattern is quite clear from the accounts they have given and that pattern is not without its significance. The defend-ant, on his own admission, had preference for males and females and he desc-ribed being bi-curious.

“It does not mean to say that any such person is attracted to young boys but, in this case, the pros-ecution do submit that what he did to these two boys was all part of his sexual feelings for males, not just adult males.”

The jury was sent out to consider its verdicts yest-erday.

Proceeding