A LITHUANIAN national found tending a cannabis farm in Bradford has avoided prison.

Bradford Crown Court heard that police who raided an end terrace house on February 27 this year discovered 45 cannabis plants with a street value of £24,800 growing in two upstairs bedrooms.

More cannabis buds were found in the kitchen.

Marius Norkus, 43, who came to the UK illegally in 2020 from Lithuania, was working as the plants’ gardener and was living at the house on Orleans Street, off Halifax Road, which had been fitted with a water butt and irrigation system. He was arrested at the scene.

When his mobile phone was examined, it contained a photograph of a previous grow in the same back-to-back house.

The court heard that Norkus did not owe money to anybody, was not in danger, and that his family in Lithuania was not being threatened.

He had been told how to run the cannabis farm with his role limited to “gardening duties”, and did not know that what he was doing was illegal.

Accepting that Norkus had spent the equivalent of a 15-month sentence in custody His Honour Judge Colin Burn sentenced him to a nine-month community order plus 20 rehabilitation activity requirement days.

He ordered the forfeiture and destruction of the drugs and equipment.