THIS was the shocking moment a three-year-old boy was squirted with acid in a Worcester shop.

The CCTV from Home Bargains showed the boy looking at a cage of footballs before Adam Cech extended his left arm and squirted the liquid onto him.

The 27-year-old Slovak walked behind another aisle, retraced his steps and began looking at his mobile phone. Moments later the boy, who suffered burns to his left forearm and forehead, was comforted by his mother.

The alleged sulphuric acid attack took place at the Tallow Hill shop at around 2.15pm on Saturday, July 21 last year.

The boy's 40-year-old father, the man said to be the driving force behind the conspiracy, appeared to cry in the dock at Worcester Crown Court yesterday when he saw the footage.

At one stage he wiped his face with a tissue. The prosecution case is that the motive behind the attack was an attempt by the Afghan father to make his estranged wife look like a bad mother in an ongoing dispute over custody of his children.

DC Paul Lettis talked the jury through CCTV footage from across Worcester which showed that a Vauxhall Vectra containing Norbert Pulko, Adam Cech and Jan Dudi followed the boy's mother as she drove from her home address towards Home Bargains before the attack.

The mother parked at the store while the three defendants parked opposite in Byfield Rise and crossed the road on foot, entering the store together.

After the alleged attack Cech left the shop first, followed by Dudi then Pulko who bought a toy and and some tissues at the till. By 2.24pm the Vectra was being driven out of Worcester on London Road, captured on a camera at the Esso garage. CCTV from Underwood's Off-Licence in Sandwell Road, Birmingham shows Martina Badiova being handed bank notes by Pulko at 7.30pm that evening.

Forty minutes later Pulko and Cech were also shown on CCTV in the same off-licence. Badiova was linked to an what the prosecution say was a failed plot by Pulko to carry out a similar attack on the same child outside a Worcester school eight days earlier.

Pulko, Badiova and Saied Hussini were photographed outside the school.

Before the attack at Home Bargains a car linked to the father and the Vectra linked to Pulko, Dudi and Cech were recorded together in the car park of the Blackpole Inn in Worcester at 10.20am. 

All seven defendants deny conspiracy to apply a corrosive fluid.

The defendants are: the boy's 40-year-old father; Adam Cech, aged 27, of Farnham Road, Birmingham who is accused of squirting the acid on the boy; Jan Dudi, 25, of Cranbrook Road, Birmingham; Jabar Paktia, 42, of New Hampton Road, Wolverhampton; Norbert Pulko, aged 22, of Sutherland Road, London; Saied Hussini, 42, of Wrottesley Road, London; and Martina Badiova, 22, of Newcombe Road, Birmingham.

The trial continues.