THE man accused of abducting and indecently assaulting two young girls in Blackburn claimed he was set up by police.

Mark Hayhurst told a jury at Preston Crown Court that detectives had planted a pair of girls' knickers in his work briefcase and also planted a footprint from a pair of trainers on a wooden board in a derelict garden where one of the indecent assaults is alleged to have happened.

Hayhurst, 33, said a police set-up was the only explanation he could give for the two pieces of evidence linking him to the crimes.

The environmental manager, of Mansfield Street, Manchester, is accused of abducting and indecently assaulting two girls aged seven and eight in the Bank Top area of Blackburn in August.

He denies all the charges, claiming that although he had been to the area where the crimes were committed, on one occasion he was visiting a chemist and on the second he was at the hairdressers.

The court was told that the trainers and the knickers were both recovered during a police search of Hayhurst's home address after his arrest on August 10.

A subsequent examination of the trainers by a forensic scientist at the police laboratory in Chorley gave a likely match between the trainers and a footprint in the garden at the crime scene, the court was told.

Hayhurst, a divorced father-of-two, said: "The only way I can presume the knickers were in the briefcase is that the police put them there. It's a set up by the police."

He added: "The footprint on the board in the garden is also a plant by the police."

Miss Fiorella Brereton, prosecuting, said the claims were "preposterous" and accused Hayhurst of going to the area in Bank Top to look for little girls, a claim he denied.

(Proceeding)