A pregnant Slovakian woman was sold for £10,000 outside a Glasgow branch of Primark, a court heard yesterday.

The High Court in Glasgow heard the woman’s claims of being brought from Slovakia to Govanhill and forced into prostitution before being sold to a Nepalese man, despite being pregnant.

The 24-year-old told the court she eventually escaped by jumping from a window of the flat where she was kept by the man, whom she knew as Nel.

She was giving evidence in the trial of Vojtech Gombar, 61, Anil Wagle, 37, Jana Sandorova, 28, and Ratislav Adam, 31, who deny trafficking women into Scotland for prostitution and slavery.

Prosecutors allege the four brought women from Slovakia to be held in “slavery or servitude” between 2011 and 2017.

The woman, who spoke from behind a screen in a closed court, told of how in 2014, when she was four or five months pregnant, she was approached by a male family member who offered her “a better life” in Glasgow. She left her home without telling her parents or taking any belongings. Her ID card was removed from her possession.

She and the man travelled to the UK by bus, where they were met by a man known as Rasto and taken to Allison Street, Govanhill. There, in a two-bedroom flat housing seven adults and several children, another woman was having sex with men for money, which the witness described as “hitchhiking”.

Advocate Depute Kath Harper asked the witness, who cannot be named for legal reasons, if she did the same thing.

The mother-of-two said: “I don’t wish to talk about it – it makes me very sad.”

She went on to say she was taken to a flat with three Pakistani men, one of whom had sex with her against her will. 

The woman told the court Rasto would bring men to the flat for her to have sex with, sometimes while he and his wife and children were in the room next door. 

During her evidence she became emotional and, at one point, said: “I want to go away from here.” 

The witness then told how Nel began having sex with her and shortly afterwards she was taken to Primark in Argyle Street, where she alleges the accused Ms Sandorova, whom she knew as Janke, was there along with her husband Rasto, a man from Slovakia, and Nel. She claims there was a discussion about how much Nel could pay for her and £10,000 was settled.

The court heard the witness was then taken to Nel’s flat where her treatment, she said, was “horrendous”.

She told the court Nel had sex with her daily, against her will, and would lock her in the flat when he went out to work.

The woman said she eventually jumped out a window when Nel was out and took a taxi back to Ms Sandorova’s house, saying she had nowhere else to go.

Gary Allan. QC, counsel for defendant Mr Wagle, asked why the witness did not mention being raped in initial police interviews. She said: “I was ashamed to talk about it.”

The trial before Lord Beckett continues.