A man has been arrested for alleged sexual abuse and a woman for assault after an incident in Malaga city last week.

The woman, 52, had asked the builder to go to her home as she needed some work doing to the bathroom. Once there, she attacked him with a chair leg for allegedly sexually abusing her adolescent niece, she later told officers.

A police patrol in the neighbourhood, answering a call from a woman in the apartment where the incident took place, stopped first to assist the injured man, 53, who was on a bench in the street. He told officers that he had been mugged and was taken to hospital.

Meanwhile at the apartment, the woman told police she had attacked the man. She said she had invented the story of needing work doing when her niece had said that the father of one of her friends had been touching her.

After investigating the alleged abuse, police arrested the man, who has since been released with a restraining order.

The woman, under investigation for assault, has also been released.