A CANNABIS farmer who pretended to be the cleaner when he was caught locking the door on an £80,000 drugs crop in a Bradford house has been jailed for two years and three months.

Ali Khalil had a video on his phone showing him cutting up cannabis plants and texts proving that he was growing and selling it, Bradford Crown Court heard on Thursday.

Khalil, 30, of Douglas Towers, Radwell Drive, off Manchester Road, Bradford, pleaded guilty to production of cannabis on the day of his trial in October and was remanded into custody.

Prosecutor Ian Cook said the police arrived in Greaves Street, Little Horton, on May 13, 2021, to catch him locking the door on the crop.

Three rooms had been given over to the production of cannabis with a total of 88 mature plants discovered and a follow-on crop of 111 seedlings in a tent in the living room.

Mr Cook said there were photos of dried cannabis on the phone and evidence that Khalil had taken 40 taxi journeys to the address from his home.

The potential yield from the mature plants was 9.24 kilos with a street value of almost £80,000 and a wholesale value of up to £55,000.

Simon Hustler said in mitigation that Khalil had come to the UK in 2009 to make something of himself and was deeply ashamed that he had become a drugs producer.

He had at first obtained a variety of jobs in factories and car washes and as a cleaner but the lockdown meant that the work had dried up.

Mr Hustler said he had no previous convictions and the grow was ‘a relatively modest set-up.’ He made comparisons to some cases where the cannabis farms contained thousands of plants and the production was on an industrial scale.

“He had no champagne lifestyle,” Mr Hustler said.

Khalil lived in a modest high-rise flat and did not even own a car. Mr Hustler said the flat was ‘not in the most desirable of locations.’ Khalil’s remand into custody had been a salutary experience and he had learned his lesson.

Recorder Mark McKone KC pointed to the harm the use of cannabis causes, including psychosis and social problems.

But he accepted that Khalil was not leading a lavish lifestyle and said he was a man of previous good character.

He ordered that the cannabis plants and growing paraphernalia be forfeit and destroyed.