A HALESOWEN man accused of launching a ‘callous and vicious’ attack on his own sister over an unpaid loan, after tracking her down to her new home, has been cleared by a jury.

John Smyth pleaded not guilty at Warwick Crown Court to wounding his sister Catherine Farooq at her home in Nuneaton, with intent to cause her grievous bodily harm.

Mr Smyth, aged 62, of Shenstone Valley Road, Halesowen, also denied an alternative charge of unlawfully wounding her and possessing an offensive weapon.

He accepted going to her address, but insisted it was his sister, whose husband is serving a 29-year prison sentence for conspiring to import huge quantities of heroin, who attacked him.

Mr Smyth said he had acted in self-defence - and at the end of a five-day trial, the jury found him not guilty of all three charges by unanimous verdicts.

The incident last year took place as 51-year-old Mrs Farooq’s daughter was in the house and had barricaded herself in the living room.

Prosecutor Samantha Crabb had told the court Mrs Farooq, who was herself jailed for nine months for money-laundering at the same time her husband Mohammed Farooq was jailed in 2013, is Mr Smyth’s sister.

Miss Crabbe said: “Over a period of time a good deal of bad feeling had built up between them as a result of a very large loan of money he had made to Catherine Farooq’s husband in 2010, somewhere in the region of £100,000."

She added Mr Smyth was ‘less than pleased’ about not being repaid the money he was owed, and made it plain he saw it as his sister’s responsibility to pay it back.

It was alleged Mr Smyth began to harass his sister, who lived in Solihull, at the time, so she moved away but on September 20 last year he turned up at her new home.

When Mrs Farooq, who was expecting a courier, opened the door, it was alleged Mr Smyth forced his way in and began to shout and swear.

It was claimed he took out a baton or truncheon and began hitting her repeatedly.

After Mr Smyth left, the police and an ambulance arrived and his sister was taken to hospital and treated for a two centimetre cut to her head, a wound to her leg and a broken bone in her forearm.

When Mr Smyth was arrested and questioned he declined to comment, in court he accepted he had gone there uninvited but he denied being armed with a baton of any kind.

He said the baton was in fact something his sister had in the hallway, and that she had picked it up and hit him with it, so he had acted in self-defence.

And he said he could not have hit her in the manner he was alleged to have done, because he had an injury to his hand.