An Ipswich youth worker accused of lying to police about the whereabouts of a man suspected of being involved in a nightclub stabbing would have known she shouldn’t have a sexual relationship with him, a court has heard.

Meera Acharya, 32, worked for a joint initiative called Suffolk Against Gang Exploitation (SAGE) which was set up by Suffolk County Council and Suffolk police following a number of gang-related incidents involving young people in 2018/2019, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

She was specifically asked to work with a 26-year-old man recently released from prison and to steer him away from having a negative influence over young people in the community, said Andrew Jackson, prosecuting.

However, Mr Jackson claimed that Acharya had formed a sexual relationship with the man and had tried to protect him by lying to police and her superiors after he became a suspect in the stabbing of Pablo McSheen at Degero’s cocktail bar in Ipswich in November 2019.

Giving evidence, Acharya’s former boss Victoria Hurling said although Acharya wasn’t a qualified social worker, she’d worked for organisations where there would have been a code of professional behaviour and she would have known the importance of maintaining a professional relationship with the young people she had contact with.

She said Acharya would have been given a work phone and knew she shouldn’t use her personal phone to contact them.

Acharya, 32, of Cedarcroft Road, Ipswich, has denied an offence of misconduct in a public office in November 2019 while.

She is alleged to have misconducted herself by lying to her superiors and the police about the extent of her contact with a man knowing he was urgently wanted by the police in connection with an offence of violence and by not informing her superiors and the police about his whereabouts and then secretly meeting him.

The trial continues.