A DANGER driver who crashed into two vehicles when he sped off from the police with cannabis on board his blue Toyota Yaris has been warned he faces a custodial sentence next Friday. 

Aqab Basharat, 27, of Midland Terrace, Keighley, collided with a marked police vehicle and a parked VW Polo during a high-speed pursuit in Keighley on September 23 last year. 

Prosecutor Lydia Pearce said that police officers on patrol on Victoria Road in the town ordered him to stop and turn off his ignition after suspecting they had witnessed a drug deal. 

Instead, he drove into the police vehicle, mounted the kerb and made off, Bradford Crown Court heard. 

The officers activated their sirens and blue lights and went after the Toyota, Miss Pearce said. 

Basharat overtook other vehicles, including a learner driver, at up to 50mph, almost collided with another motorist, drove over a blind hill at a bridge in the centre of the road and went straight across a mini roundabout. 

He then went down a dead end, hit the parked VW Polo and made off on foot. 

He was chased and apprehended soon afterwards. 

The court heard that he had three small bags of cannabis with him in the car and he tested positive for the Class B drug at the roadside.  

He told the police that ‘a random man’ had asked him for drugs but he said he didn’t have any. 

Basharat pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to dangerous driving and possession of cannabis. 

The court heard that since committing the offences he had been disqualified from driving and fined at Bradford and Keighley Magistrates’ Court for driving over the prescribed limit.  

Recorder Taryn Turner adjourned the dangerous driving sentence until Friday, October 6, so that more information could be provided to the court about that conviction. 

She told Basharat’s barrister, Ella Embleton, she was ‘exercised’ by the matter and wanted to know more of the chronology of the magistrates’ court case. 

She enlarged Basharat’s bail but warned him that it was ‘extremely serious and dangerous offending.’ 

“Don’t think that by adjourning it for a week, I’m giving you any expectation or hope that it will be anything but an immediate custodial sentence,” she said.