A man caught tending a £190,000 cannabis factory at a former Bradford mill fractured a limb jumping from the roof when the police arrived with a search warrant.

Illegal immigrant, Petref Leka, was detained while a second man spotted at a property in the Leeds Road area of Bradford, managed to flee and is still at large.

Leka, 23, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to being concerned in the production of cannabis and was today jailed for 18 months.

Prosecutor Camille Morland said that the police arrived at the mill at 9.30am on February 16 and found a cannabis factory on four floors.

There were 403 small plants and a further room in the basement was being prepared to grow more of the drugs.

Miss Morland told Bradford Crown Court that the electricity supply had been bypassed and there were lamps, transformers and fans.

The potential street value of the crop was £189,985 and it had a wholesale value of between £66,495 and £133,000.

Leka, an Albanian national, said he had come to the UK illegally eight months previously and then made no further comment when questioned by the police.

In mitigation, Simon Hustler said that he was living in “unsavoury” conditions while minding the factory. He had been there a very short time and had no family in the United Kingdom.

He came to this country to build a better life for himself and worked in the construction industry to pay off the cost of being smuggled here in the back of a lorry.

Leka had no previous convictions and was manipulated into looking after the cannabis plants. He was sorry and regretful about his role at the factory and had accepted his guilt at the earliest opportunity.

Recorder Andrew Haslam QC said Leka involved himself in the production of controlled drugs to pay off the debt he owed to his traffickers.

He was found in an old mill that had been converted into a very sophisticated cannabis factory. It was over four floors, with another in the pipeline.

There were 62 transformers, 62 lamps and nine fans and the electricity supply had been bypassed.

Leka was one of two people living there with fully stocked fridge freezers, an oven and blow-up beds.

The set-up would enable the sale of cannabis on a commercial scale, Recorder Haslam said, with the potential for it to produce the drug on an industrial scale.