A man who came to the UK on a six-month visitors’ visa was caught illegally working at a Bradford store seven years later, a Court heard.

Indian national Hakim Obri, 54, used a fake Portugese passport to get a job at Bombay Stores, in Shearbridge Road, in February, 2006.

He was caught when immigration officers swooped on the shop last summer after Obri used his forged passport to try to obtain a driving licence.

Obri, of Rand Street, Great Horton, Bradford, was jailed for six months when he appeared at Bradford Crown Court yesterday.

He pleaded guilty to using a false passport in 2006 and possession of a false identity document in May last year.

The court heard that Obri would be deported when he had served his sentence and his wife, who joined him in the UK in 2005, was due to be sent home to India later this month.

Prosecutor Duncan Ritchie said Obri came to Britain in 2003 on a visitors’ visa with a group of his countrymen who were attending a ceremony in London.

Mr Ritchie said Obri was not entitled to seek work while he was in the UK.

In the summer of last year, he applied to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Centre for a driving licence.

Staff were suspicious of the passport and alerted the Border Agency.

Obri’s solicitor Phillipa Murray said he thought it would be easier to find work in Bradford than in Kuwait, where he had been living, or his native India.

He paid £3,000 for a forged passport and earned £12,000 a year at Bombay Stores.

In mitigation Miss Murray said Obri had not entered the country illegally. He was a hard-working man who had not been in any trouble.

He was terrified about the court hearing and fearful of how his wife would cope when repatriated.

The judge, Recorder Simon Jackson QC, said Obri’s forged passport was about to expire.

He planned to use the driving licence to obtain another one to flout immigration laws by travelling to and from India.