A woman whose body was found dumped in a lay-by in Gerrards Cross after allegedly being murdered, worked as a prostitute to fund a heroin habit, a court heard yesterday.

Following the prosecutions claim that Anita Kapoor was murdered in London after being sexually assaulted in the back of a car, defence lawyers told jurors that the accused, Navin Mohan, was being threatened by the woman’s “pimp”.

It was claimed yesterday that her boyfriend, Stanley Flanders, heard Ms Kapoor begging for her life before she was killed.

However, Martin Heslop QC, defending claims that Mr Flanders was her pimp who demanded money from Mohan on the night the 34-year-old died.

Questioning Mr Flanders' account of what he heard on the phone, Mr Heslop said: "All of that is untrue and made up by you [Mr Flanders] to protect yourself from what was really going on.

"It was designed to cover up what you were really up to that night. Your calls were made to Anita's phone while she was in that red Micra, not as a concern for her, but for the purpose of demanding money from the man she was with.

"You were demanding money from him because he was with your prostitute girlfriend and you were threatening to expose him to the police, or even beat him up, if he did not pay money to you through her.

"You demanded he pay over to her £300 otherwise you would set the police on him and you said you would beat him up. At one stage, in a fit of anger, you said that you would kill him.

"You were her pimp, weren't you? You were pimping her out, controlling her and taking her money to fund your drug habit, but you do not want to admit it."

Mr Heslop said that Mr Flanders was involved in an operation called "clipping", in which pimps would threaten prostitutes' clients either in person or over the phone in order to gain substantial sums of money.

He suggested that in August 2014 Mr Flanders had been involved in an incident in which one of Anita's customers was threatened with a knife and ordered to pay £2,000, but the victim only coughed up £165.

Mr Flanders, giving live evidence, denied all suggestions put to him and the jury, and maintained that he had been in a relationship with Ms Kapoor for two years. He said what she did with her money was her business and he did not use her money to buy heroin.

Mr Flanders said: "When I spoke to Anita on the phone I asked her if she wanted me to come down to the cashpoint because Sainsbury's was quite a long way away, but she said no.

"She said she would be fine and then said, 'he's coming, he's coming, I will call you back later', but it never happened."

Reflecting on the harrowing moment he heard his girlfriend pleading for her life, Mr Flanders said: "I was shouting down the phone, 'Anita, Anita!' But she could not hear me.

"All I could hear her saying was, 'please leave me alone. Don't hurt me.' That will live with me for the rest of my life.

"Later on in the night I swapped the SIM card in my phone, because Anita knew that number off by heart. I thought if her phone had stopped working and she wanted to get hold of me from elsewhere she would call the number she knew off by heart."

Sobbing, he added: "She never called."

The trial continues today.