Members of a Gravesend Roma gypsy gang trafficked vulnerable young women to the UK to be sold in to sham marriages to Asian men desperate to be allowed to stay in the country, a court heard.

The women were recruited in their native Slovakia and brought to the UK through an organised criminal network operating in Germany, the Czech Republic as well as the UK, jurors were told.

The money-making scheme was smashed after one of the women was brutally raped by the Pakistani man to whom she had just been "sold" in March 2013, the court heard.

Paramedics were called to the home of a Whipps Cross Hospital security guard in Walthamstow, east London, to treat the 27-year-old who was bleeding heavily.

While in hospital, she told authorities that she had been the victim of rape and people trafficking, sparking a major police investigation.

Officers were led to an address in Gravesend, Kent and the Suchy family who were responsible for her treatment after she arrived in the UK, the Old Bailey heard.

Afterwards, three more alleged victims were identified along with the defendants Roman Ziga, 26, his brother Jozef Ziga, 28, and 43-year-old Igor Boros, all from Slovakia.

Opening the trial, prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones QC told the jury: "The defendants you see in the dock today are part of the machine that operates in Slovakia, recruiting and conveying women to the UK and elsewhere.

"And in doing so, they were assisted by others involved in the network, principally a family by the name of Suchy, also Slovakian and of Roma origin.

"This group would find women who were for some reason desperate or destitute, or both, and would make the arrangements for them to come or be brought to the UK."

Ms Karmy-Jones told how one of the women fell prey to the trafficking gang when she was recruited by Jozef Ziga in Slovakia in January 2013 on the promise of fruit-picking work.

But when the 29-year-old arrived in the UK she was forced into prostitution and then sold to an Indian man for £3,000 before making her escape.

Another of the victims came from a good background but had some mental health issues, the court was told.

The 23-year-old fell in with a man who introduced her to drugs and the Ziga brothers. When she arrived in the UK, her identity card was taken and she was passed to a Pakistani man to be his wife. She too managed to run away and return home to Slovakia with help from her family.

The court heard that police in Gravesend knew about the woman and interviewed her but did not act or pass on the information she gave them to a specialist team.

The other woman was 29 and pregnant when she arrived in the UK so efforts to marry her off to an Indian or Pakistani man or force her into prostitution failed.

The court had heard that the Suchy family - Tibor Suchy, 29, his wife Viktoria Sanova, 28, and brother in law Rene Sana, 31, of Abbey Road, Gravesend, had already been convicted of offences relating to the first woman and had variously pleaded guilty to offences relating to the others before the trial.

However, the Ziga brothers and Boros deny charges of plotting to traffick women and breaching UK immigration laws.