Police officers found heroin with a street value of almost £150,000 when they searched a staff locker at a McDonald's restaurant in Bradford.

The detectives were carrying out a routine inquiry as part of the ongoing riots investigation. And after getting authority to force open the locker, they discovered a holdall containing almost three kilos of the Class A drug.

Arfan Naseer, 21, who worked as a floor manager at the McDonald's in Ingleby Road, yesterday went on trial accused of possessing the heroin with intent to supply.

Naseer, who denies the charge, was due to tell a jury at Bradford Crown Court today how he came to have the drugs in his locker.

When he handed himself in to police a few days after the drugs were discovered last July he claimed that he had found the heroin packages after he saw a man going into some bushes.

Prosecutor Philip Standfast said the holdall was found to contain three packages each the size of a house brick and each containing just under a kilo of heroin.

When the packages were analysed they were found to be 54 per cent pure heroin and could have been used to make up nearly 30,000 £5 street deals.

Less than an hour before the heroin was discovered, the officers had visited Naseer's home in Durham Road, Girlington, as part of the riots inquiry.

Mr Standfast pointed out that during discussions at his home and a series of police interviews Naseer never mentioned anything about being put under pressure to look after the drugs.

"The prosecution's case is that the story about finding the drugs in the bushes was nonsense," said Mr Standfast.

"And at no stage did he suggest to the police that anybody had ever put any pressure on him to hold the drugs."

During his police interviews, Naseer said he was contacted by an officer who told him his life was in grave danger because of drugs.

He claimed he was too scared to tell anyone and went to Leeds where he eventually told a female friend.

He suggested that he thought the packages may have contained money, but later realised it was drugs and didn't know what to do with them. "I wanted to hand them in, but didn't know how to," he told police.

During police questioning he repeatedly dismissed suggestions that he was looking after the drugs for someone else.

The trial continues.