A student has claimed she was raped after her drink was spiked with "a stupefying substance" by a man in an Edinburgh nightclub.

Robert Lyttle, 26, from Bangor, Co Down, is accused of giving the 21-year-old woman the substance to make her incapable of resisting.

At the High Court in Edinburgh, Mr Lyttle has denied forcibly stripping his victim before raping her and making her carry out other sex acts which left her severely injured.

The attack is alleged to have taken place in Edinburgh in February last year after the woman had spent the evening drinking with friends.

Back seat

The woman, who cannot be named to protect her identity, told a jury that she took a sip from a bottle and soon afterwards she did not know what was happening to her.

The student told the court she left the club alone at the end of the night to catch a taxi when the accused pulled up in a car and asked her to get in.

Mr Lyttle, she said, became aggressive and began swearing as he told her to get in the car after she refused.

"I got in the back and he said: 'You could have got in the front, I don't bite you know'," she said.

She remembered being outside what she later identified to police as Boroughmuir Rugby Club in Edinburgh's Meggetland.

The woman alleged that Mr Lyttle then stripped her and forced her to carry out sex acts before raping her as she lay in the back of the car.

The trial continues.