A TAXI driver was caught ferrying £3,000 of Class A drugs across Bradford in his underpants because the police stopped him for not wearing a seatbelt.

Tauqir Zeb was pulled up on Upper Rushton Road in an uninsured black BMW with hundreds of wraps of crack cocaine and heroin on him and £600 in cash.

Zeb, 29, of St Augustines Terrace, Undercliffe, Bradford, was very nervous and physically shaking after he was stopped and questioned at 10.30am on October 31 last year, Bradford Crown Court heard today.

When he told officers he was not insured to drive the car a seizure notice was issued and the vehicle searched.

Zeb was then found to have wraps of heroin with a street value of £2,155 in a large white plastic bag in his underpants, along with £1,327 of crack cocaine.

Prosecutor, Laura McBride, said he told arresting officers: "I am just a taxi driver. I am just moving them on for someone."

Cocaine with a street value of £644 was discovered in his bedroom , along with scales with powder on them and a cutting agent.

Zeb later said he was acting as a drugs courier after running up a debt for a wedding.

Miss McBride said the high purity of the cocaine seized was an aggravating factor and the fact that Zeb, who was not a drug addict, was working for financial reward.

He had custody of more than £4,000 of drugs in individually wrapped street deals.

Zeb pleaded guilty at Bradford and Keighley Magistrates' Court to possession of heroin, crack cocaine and cocaine with intent to supply.

His barrister, Soheil Khan, said Zeb had lost his job as a taxi driver after pleading guilty to the offences.

He was performing a limited function under the direction of others and there was no evidence of drug dealing on his phone or of any high living, Mr Khan told the court .

Zeb had worked as a taxi driver for three years, been employed as a window cleaner, a restaurant worker and in the security industry before then.

He now had the offer of a job as an administrative worker with a civil law firm in Sheffield.

Mr Khan said Zeb had worked for several charities, helping to transport toys for ill children at Sheffield Children's Hospital.

He had one previous conviction, nine years ago, for possession of cannabis.

Zeb was the sole carer for his elderly and infirm parents, who would not know what they would do without him, Mr Khan said.

Judge Colin Burn sentenced Zeb to two years imprisonment, suspended for two years, with 260 hours of unpaid work.

He said Zeb would have been jailed for three years had he been convicted after a trial.

With a third knocked off for his guilty plea, the sentence could be suspended.

Judge Burn noted that Zeb was a charity worker whose elderly and ill parents relied on him.

"It would be a significant punishment for them if I sent you to prison today," he told him.