Nadine Osman

A man has been charged with racially aggravated assault after a Muslim woman was kicked in the stomach while pregnant with twins causing her to lose the babies.

David Gallacher, 37, will appear before a magistrates after a 34-year-old Somali woman, who was wearing a headscarf, was attacked as she walked close to a mosque in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire on August 6 last year. The woman was in the Co-op store when she was approached by a man who made racial remarks, Thames Valley Police said.

She was followed to her car, where the man then hit her 40-year-old husband over the head with a bag of ice and a bottle, before kicking the woman in the torso, causing her to fall to the floor, police said. Both were taken to Milton Keynes General Hospital. She later revealed she did not know she was expecting twins until medics told her she had lost them. The unnamed mother-of-four was forced to flee her home in fear as a result of the assault.

Gallacher was charged on February 6 with one count of assault occasioning Actual Bodily Harm, two counts of racially/religiously aggravated assault, three of assaulting a police constable in the execution of their duty and one of common assault.

Gallacher was arrested a day after police released CCTV images of the alleged assault.

In a statement to The Muslim News, a spokesman for Thames Valley Police said: “The second incident relates to an incident on September 14 in Larch Grove, Bletchley, when three police officers were assaulted as they arrested a man.”

Gallacher has been bailed to appear at Milton Keynes Magistrates’ Court on March 14.