AN “ANGRY and frustrated” man took an axe to a local bank after trying to set the building on fire when he snapped after suffering months of back pain.

Call centre worker Iman Ullah tried to burn the Halifax Bank in Low Street, Keighley, but when the blaze did not take hold he smashed the door and windows with the axe, causing more than £5,000 worth of damage.

Ullah, 20, of River Street, Keighley, then took the axe to the Jet filling station in Keighley Road, Bingley, where he told the late-night attendant: “Phone the police, there’s a robbery in progress.”

He then left the filling station, deliberately cracking the glass door with the axe as he went.

Ullah pleaded guilty to possession of the axe, criminal damage and arson at the bank and criminal damage at the filling station, between 10.30pm and midnight on July 2.

Prosecutor Mark Brookes said that he was remanded in custody on his arrest for the preparation of a probation report and a pyschiatric report.

Ullah’s barrister Lydia Carroll told the court that he was a man of previous good character who immediately admitted to the police what he had done.

He had injured his back while doing a second job, as a casual labourer, and had been laid up for weeks in severe pain and feeling isolated.

On the night of the offences, he snapped and took the axe and can from his uncle’s shed.

“He took his anger and frustration out on the building and then shouted there had been a robbery because he wanted the police called,” Miss Carroll said.

Ullah had no intention of committing a robbery, Bradford Crown Court was told yesterday.

Miss Carroll said he was “an upstanding young man” who had now spent three months in custody.

“This is an incident that was completely out of character,” she told the court.

Judge Jonathan Rose said it was “a bizarre case”.

Ullah was from an excellent family and had done well at school, the court heard.

He was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time.

Neither Ullah’s probation officer, not his pyschiatrist could explain why he committed the offences, but he had written the court a letter full of remorse.

“What an earth compelled you to get an axe and pick up a jerry can of fuel and attempt to set the bank on fire and then attack it with an axe?” Judge Rose asked.

He sentenced Ullah to a two-year community order with 250 hours of unpaid work, a 60-day rehabilitation activity requirement with the probation service, and a six-month electronically monitored curfew.

Judge Rose reserved any breaches of the order to himself, telling Ullah: “If you put a foot wrong, you will go back to prison.”