A security guard was shot in the leg and a shop owner was blasted with a double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun during armed hold-ups in Bradford last year, a city crown court jury was told.

Shopkeeper Vijay Patel was gunned down in March as he left his Wine and Dine grocers store in Otley Road carrying about £1,000 in takings.

Prosecutor John Topham said an Asian man ran towards him and shot him in the leg as he demanded the money. The man and an accomplice then drove off with the money, leaving Mr Patel with a fractured thigh bone.

In May security guard Mohammed Bashir was also shot with a handgun in the leg when two masked robbers raided the Co-op store in Legrams Lane. Two female assistants were forced into backroom and money from the safe and mobile top-up cards were taken by the raiders, who were both Asian men. They then used a customer's BMW car to escape after firing a shot into the air.

Mr Topham said: "Within a matter of minutes the BMW was spotted going down Thornton Road and crashed into a parked car at the side of the road. The two robbers ran off but, in the collision... the passenger hit his head on the windscreen with the impact and there was a crack in the windscreen of the BMW."

About a fortnight later the sub-postmaster at Girlington Post Office, Andrew Teeman, was confronted by three masked men when he arrived to open up at 7.30am.

A handgun was put to Mr Teeman's head and he was forced at gunpoint to switch off the alarm.

Mr Topham said the safes were on time locks and the robbers waited for both to open before stealing an estimated £10,000.

Imran Ali, 22, of Whitby Road, Girlington, and Yasser Rashid, 23, of Brantwood Drive, Stoney Ridge, have both pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit robberies between March and June last year.

Mr Topham said evidence linking the pair with the raids included a DNA match of skin cells recovered from the cracked windscreen and a sample taken from Rashid.

And he revealed police obtained authorisation to secretly record conversations between the two men in a cell.

The trial continues.