The Manchester Evening News has won its court fight to name a teenager whose driving left a boy paralysed and almost killed a lollipop lady.

The paper showed Sajid Hussain’s face on its front page after previously pixelating his features and disguising his clothing.

The magistrates, sitting in a youth court, originally said they could not take into consideration the MEN’s request to drop the defendant’s anonymity.

The paper had notified the court by letter that, if Hussain was convicted, it intended to apply at the end of the hearing for the lifting of the automatic anonymity granted by Section 49 of the 1933 Children and Young Persons Act.

It had been intended that a reporter should attend to expand on the reasons given in the paper’s letter – but because of difficulties in getting Hussain to court, the reporter did not learn of the hearing until it was over.

When questioned by the paper, the court office said the application had been refused because the request should have been made in person.

After consulting Peter Stone of Cobbetts, the newspaper’s solicitors, the MEN asked that magistrates should meet again to hear its application, and they agreed to do so.

MEN solicitor Jeremy Steele told the court: “It is the view of the Manchester Evening News and the families of both [victims], that the offences were so serious that anonymity should be lifted.”

He told the court that the ban should be lifted so that the defendant’s neighbours could be aware of him when he was released from custody and so that they could help to prevent him from offending again.

He added that the court should remember he was less than four months away from his 18th birthday – and would then no longer be a youth in the eyes of the law.

The MEN informed the youth about the application to overturn the ban the hearing, but he failed to give his solicitor instructions as to how he wanted him to proceed.

The chairman of the bench said the MEN’s application had been considered and that reporting restrictions were now lifted.

Speaking after the hearing, MEN editor Paul Horrocks said: “This was a good outcome for the Manchester Evening News and for the families of the injured people who supported us all the way.

“We also had a lot of support from our readers. The grandparents of the little boy who was left paralysed by Hussain even came to court to listen to the application.

“The Magistrates obviously grasped the public interest argument and their common sense judgment should be an example to other courts.

People like Hussain should not be allowed the cloak of anonymity – and it proves that newspapers do play an important public interest role in the communities they serve.”

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