A gruesome accident at a butchers that ended in a man losing his hand in a meat grinder has left the owners unable to eat or sleep.

Malik Raza, who owns the Surrey Halal Meat butchers shop with his wife, has spoken of his horror at finding a customer with his hand wedged inside the automatic meat grinder.

The shocking accident happened at closing time, shortly before 7.30pm on Saturday, February 11, at his shop in Kingston Road, New Malden.

Mr Raza said he refused to serve the customer as his store was shutting, and he had left the shop front and gone into the walk-in cold room for “just a few minutes” when he heard the man begin crying and shouting.

Mr Raza said: “He had come over the counter and took the mince in the cubes, and put them in the grinder to do it himself.

“He said he was in a rush. I was fuming. Why couldn’t he wait?

“He started loudly crying and crying, so I came back. I saw his hand was stuck inside. I called 999 straightaway.

“The ambulance staff told me to go outside so I couldn’t see what they were doing. My heart was beating so fast, I was so shocked. We were crying too.

“They said I shouldn’t see what was going to happen.”

He added: “It’s very sad. We can’t sleep, we can’t eat. We keep thinking about it.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”

Mr Raza confirmed the emergency services took the meat grinder away with them when they left and took the man to hospital.

Both the London Ambulance Service (LAS) and firefighters from Wimbledon fire station were called to the butchers shop.

A spokesman from Wimbledon fire station confirmed the man lost his hand in the accident, and said: “The LAS were on the scene first. We were called because they needed our equipment to get him out.

“We had to reverse the grinder. His hand had to come out the way it had come in.”

A spokeswoman for the LAS said: “We sent an ambulance crew, a single responder in a car and our Hazardous Area Response Team (HART) to the scene. The first of our medics arrived at the scene in under six minutes.

“We treated a man at the scene for a hand injury and took him as a priority to a hospital in south London.”