A woman accused of running a regime of brutality and extreme punishment that led to the death her teenage sister-in-law told a jury that she had been beaten herself.

Salma Begum and her husband Suhail Uddin are alleged to have murdered 19-year-old Shahena Uddin at the family house in Leavesden Road during the night of October 10 to 11 last year.

Giving evidence at St Albans Crown Court, she said she had been beaten by her mother-in-law when she came to the UK from Bangladesh and that she began a relationship with her brother-in-law after her marriage failed.

In the witness box she said her husband Suhail, 35, was her first cousin. Their mothers, who are sisters, had arranged the marriage in Bangladesh.

She spent her childhood in Bangladesh before coming to the UK in 2000 after her marriage. Although her passport gives her date of birth as November 10, 1982, making her now 33, she said she was in fact three or four years younger.

When she arrived in the UK she said she lived with her husband and mother- in-law.

"She was really bad. She made me do work. I had no choice. She beat me up - more than her own kids," she said.

She said her marriage was in trouble by 2008 because she could not have children.

"He would not give me a divorce. He wanted to make me suffer," she said.

Salma Begum said she could not leave because the family's three youngest daughters, including Shahena, would end up in foster care. She told the jury the three girls were: "loved."

In July 2011 she said the police were called after her husband had hit her, but she did not tell them what happened. She said: "I didn't want to make things worse for myself.

"It is embarrassing to tell anyone. In our culture you don't talk about this kind of stuff to other people."

In late 2008 or 2009 her relationship with his younger brother Jewell, who is also on trial, became "intimate".

Asked by her barrister Lisa Wilding QC to describe her relationship with her brother-in-law, she said: "It was very serious."

She and her husband were sleeping in separate rooms, but she was still changing her clothes in his bedroom.

Ms Wilding said that last week it was revealed that Salma had been secretly recorded by her husband as she changed, sometimes when she was naked. Salma Begum replied: "I feel disgusted at the way he treated me."

The jury has been told that Shahena was one of eight siblings, but the parents were no longer on the scene and Suhail and Salma were the legal guardians of her and two other sisters.

Beatings and punishments by the brothers are said to have been regularly handed out to the younger sisters.

They included being made to stand for long periods staring into the toilet bowl, being made to lick the toilet seat, eat paper, being deprived of the use of the lavatory and drinking water and made to eat rice when they did not want to.

Salma Begum and her husband deny murder.

With them in the dock are the dead girl's three other brothers, Jewell, 27, Jhuhal, 33 and Tohel Uddin, 24, who all deny, along with Salma Begum, causing or allowing the death of a vulnerable adult.

Shahena's sister Rehena Uddin, 22, pleads not guilty to causing or allowing the death of a vulnerable adult.

All six also plead not guilty to conspiracy to pervert the course of public justice by attempting to impede the police investigation into the circumstances of Shahena's death.

Earlier Mr Justice Spencer told the jury at St Albans Crown Court that he had ruled that Laila Begum, 25, had no case to answer on charges of causing or allowing the death of a vulnerable adult and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. She was freed from the court today/Weds.

The trial continues.