A doctor performed female genital mutilation (FGM) on a young mother after she gave birth at the Whittington Hospital, a court has heard.

Dhanuson Dharmasena, 32, is on trial accused of carrying out the illegal procedure in the first prosecution of its kind in the UK.

The woman, 24 at the time, first underwent FGM aged six in Somalia, Southwark Crown Court heard today.

The mother-of-two, now 27, lives in Britain and went to the hospital in Magdala Avenue, Archway, in November 2012 in labour with her first child.

During labour, her FGM stitches were torn.

Dharmasena, a junior registrar, sewed her back up “at the insistence, or with the encouragement” of a second man, Hasan Mohamed, in a procedure that amounted to FGM, the court heard.

A midwife realised what was happening “was illegal”, jurors heard.

She took Dharmasena to one side and told him. He told the on-call consultant and explained “he did not know that he was not allowed to do it until the midwife had told him”.

Dharmasena, of Ilford, Essex, denies carrying out FGM.

Mohamed, 41, denies one count of aiding or abetting the procedure, and one count of intentionally encouraging or assisting the commission of an offence.

The trial continues.