A Black Country schoolgirl who witnessed the polar bear attack which left a student dead could suffer terrifying flashbacks of the ordeal, her father fears.

Maninder Kaur Dhallu, aged 17, from Walsall, was among a group of 13 taking part in an expedition to the frozen north when their camp came under attack.

Her father, 48-year-old Rajinder Singh, has revealed she saw the bear’s horrifying attack, in which 17-year-old Eton student Horatio Chapple was killed and four other members of the Norway expedition were mauled.

Mr Singh, who collected his traumatised daughter from Heathrow late on Sunday night, said he now fears the ongoing psychological effect of the attack on Maninder, a pupil at the King Edward VI High School for Girls in Edgbaston.

“She’s still very distressed. We’re just trying to let her get as much rest as possible at the moment,” he said. “We got home late on Sunday night and haven’t really discussed what happened - that’s going to take time.

“It’ll take time for her to recover and the worry for us now is that she could have flashbacks of the incident.”

Mr Chapple was killed when the polar bear attacked the group at a campsite in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Circle.

“I feel for this boy’s family,” added Mr Singh, of Bellflower Drive.

Three other members of the team were badly hurt in the attack before expedition leader Mike ‘Spike’ Reid shot the beast dead, despite being mauled.

Mr Singh’s daughter was raising money for Cancer Research UK and had a week of the three-week trip left.

“She had been looking forward to the trip for quite a while - a couple of months,” said Mr Singh.

She wrote on her Just Giving fund-raising page before setting off: “I will be venturing out into the untouched beauty and wilderness of Svalbard, located deep in the Arctic Circle. As it will be the Arctic summertime, I will be experiencing 24-hour daylight and temperatures of around minus ten degrees Celcius.”

The intrepid teenager had raised more than £1,000 for her charity.