A KARATE instructor who seduced a vulnerable 13-year-old pupil has had the appeal against his conviction thrown out.

Jaspal Riat met Dana Baker when she was a pupil at his Birmingham karate school.

Over the course of a year, he lured the teenager into having a full sexual relationship with him.

Tragically, after the relationship ended Dana – described as being “particularly vulnerable” – took her own life in March 2011. She was 16.

Following a trial in September last year, Riat, formally of Denewood Avenue, Handsworth Wood, Birmingham, was convicted of sexually assaulting the Stourport schoolgirl, and seven counts of sexual activity with a child. He was jailed for eight years.

Riat, who had denied the offences throughout the trial, later appealed on the basis that statements made to police by the girl should not have gone before the jury as “hearsay” evidence.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the case on Wednesday. Riat’s legal team had argued the evidence related to alleged conduct which took place over a long time and their client had been denied the chance to cross-examine Dana.

Dana, a former Stourport High School and Sixth Form Centre pupil, was one of Riat’s most successful pupils.

She had represented Great Britain at the WUKO World Junior Karate Championships in 2008.

But Lord Justice Hughes, Mrs Justice Dobbs and Mr Justice Globe, dismissing his appeal, said the girl’s video-recorded statements were backed up by a wealth of other evidence.

It included the girl confiding to a nurse she was having a relationship with an older man and accounts by her friends of the relationship.

Lord Justice Hughes said: “The hearsay evidence of the complainant was strongly supported and did not stand as a bare, untestable allegation. It could safely be assessed by the jury.

“The question was whether there was a possibility that could not be excluded that there never had been any sexual relationship at all between this child and the defendant.

“There was ample evidence on which the jury could safely conclude that there had been such a relationship.

“The overwhelming likelihood, on the evidence as a whole, was that the consensual, but abusive, relationship, had indeed existed and the complainant had done her best to avoid getting the defendant into trouble.”