A Muslim woman who repeatedly beat a 10-year-old girl with a steel ladle for not reading enough verses of the Koran is facing jail today.

Asia Parveen, 31 brandished a knife at the child after accusing her of lying about her prayers.  Parveen, who was five months pregnant at the time, also forced the girl to stand with her arms outstretched for four hours, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.

The girl, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, escaped from the house in Stoke Newington, north London, and police found her alone at a bus stop in Waltham Forest, east London, almost four hours later in the early hours of the morning.

Doctors identified 56 injuries when she was examined at hospital,

Parveen, who is a mother-of-three, accepted causing some of the injuries with the ten inch cooking spoon but said others must have been caused when the girl 'fell over.'

Prosecutor Tom Nicholson told the court an argument started between Parveen and the girl on August 15 last year during Ramadan.

'The girl was praying from the Koran and Ms Parveen accused her of lying about how many of the verses she had read,' he said. 'She was 10 at the time. Ms Parveen took a metal spoon about 10 inches in size and the Crown's case is that she hit the child with it repeatedly over a half an hour period, causing extensive bruising over both arms, her legs and head. 'The Crown's case is that Ms Parveen said she was going to kill the girl and ran to get a knife from the kitchen.

'The girl had no alternative but to leave at around 10pm. She got a bus and a train and it was about 1.50am when the police found her at a bus stop in Broadway Parade, Waltham Forest.  She was on her own and extremely cold. She was taken to hospital and an examination found she had suffered 56 injuries.'

Parveen admitted a single count of child cruelty but insisted that she only used the spoon once or twice on the girl's arms and bottom.

Judge Martyn Zeidman accepted Parveen's basis of plea, saying it would not be in the public interest for the child to give evidence. 'On the face of it, the defence assertion is incredible. But I don't regard it in the public interest to make the child give evidence. In any view, the defendant has behaved in an absolutely disgraceful way, and what an irony that the child was encouraged to behave in a godly fashion when this was far from godly.

Adjourning the case until June 15 for reports, Judge Zeidman told Parveen: 'I'm releasing you on bail but that gives no indication on what will be the eventual sentence.

'All options are open so you must not assume that because you got bail you will necessarily avoid an immediate prison sentence.'

It does not say that she is the child’s mother; so what was the relationship? Is the little girl the child of a senior wife? Where is her husband in all this? Where is the child’s father?