A MAN caught tending an “industrial” scale cannabis factory in Bradford has been jailed for 40 months.

Adrian Lenkiewicz told the police he was threatened with a gun to his head and ordered to guard the £150,000 crop to pay off a heroin debt.

Lenkiewicz, 25, was homeless when he was given accommodation in the three-storey mill complex, with an airbed, television set, laptop computer, PlayStation and well-stocked fridge, Bradford Crown Court heard today.

He pleaded guilty to production of cannabis at Downham Street, off Leeds Road, after he was apprehended in the building on November 23 last year.

Prosecutor Michael Smith said the police busted the huge factory when they spotted condensation on the concealed windows of the disused upper floors.

Access was locked up and boarded off but officers broke in and discovered 329 mature cannabis plants in four rooms and a “nursery” of 500 small plants.

“The scale, sophistication and level of criminality was industrial,” Mr Smith said.

The crop was being grown in rotation, with each grow estimated to yield 36 kilos of cannabis with a street value of £150,000.

The court heard that three such crops could be harvested in a year.

Lenkiewicz told the police he had a gun put to his head and was forced to caretake the factory.

But the court heard he had keys to the locked roller shutter and could come and go as he pleased.

He was given an instruction manual in his native Polish on how to grow cannabis.

He told the police he was tending the plants to pay off the £1,000 drug debt and then planned to return to Poland.

Lenkiewicz’s barrister, Shufqat Khan, said: “These are not his drugs. It was not his set-up.”

The defendant was homeless after coming to the UK in 2012, with dreams of doing well, and working long hours for low pay in a bakery, warehouse and car wash.

Lenkiewicz had become addicted to class A drugs and quickly run up a debt.

“What started off as a dream has become a nightmare,” Mr Khan said.

Judge Jonathan Rose told Lenkiewicz: “You had a dream that the streets of Bradford were paved with gold only to find the truth was very far from that.”

The dream turned sour when Lenkiewicz became addicted to drugs and was pressured to tend the cannabis plants.

“It was your choice to become a gardener,” Judge Rose said, saying Lenkiewicz’s “comfortable” living conditions were far from the servitude in which similar caretakers of such factories had to live.