A CONVICTED danger driver who skipped his Thinking Skills programme saying he was visiting his sick grandmother in Pakistan has been locked up after a judge activated the whole of his suspended sentence order.

Zishan Ali was spared an immediate prison term in February for aggravated vehicle taking after driving off in his mother’s Range Rover and crashing it into three other vehicles.

He wrote off a Mercedes Sprinter van, struck a VW Polo and injured a woman at the wheel of a Mazda while driving at speed in Bradford without a licence or insurance.

Ali, 27, of Kensington Street, Girlington, Bradford, pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicle taking on April 30 last year, including dangerous driving on Manchester Road.

The court heard then that his mother woke to find her black Range Rover gone and the keys missing from her handbag.

Ali had three collisions attempting to squeeze past vehicles and failed to stop every time.

He was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment, suspended for 18 months, and ordered to attend the Thinking Skills programme for at least 21 days and undertake 15 rehabilitation activity days with the probation service.

Today, Ali was back at Bradford Crown Court to admit breaching the order by failing to attend a Better Solutions orientation session on July 12.

Abdul Shakoor, barrister for the probation service, said he flew to Pakistan instead to visit his ‘supposedly’ ill grandmother but he had not provided any medical evidence to back that up.

He returned to the United Kingdom in September but the probation service regarded it as ‘a flagrant breach’ and recommended that the custodial element of the sentence be activated.

Lydia Pearce, Ali’s barrister, said his grandmother was ill and he had kept in touch with the probation service, he didn’t just ‘drop off the map.’ She conceded that his level of engagement ‘had not been ideal’ but said he had attended five out of eight Thinking Skills sessions.

He had a wife and baby son and she urged the court that it would be unjust to activate the sentence in all the circumstances.

But Judge Andrew Hatton said Ali had ‘snubbed his nose’ at the court.

The probation service had warned him that not attending the session would put him in breach of the suspended sentence.

Ali had been told by the previous judge that non-compliance ran the risk of custody.

Judge Hatton activated the full nine months of the sentence.