A BRADFORD drug dealer running his own trafficking business to help pay off a multi-thousand pound debt has been jailed for three years and four months.

Zaffar Shafi, 55, had been an entrenched heroin addict for 30 years and owed up to £30,000 that he had spent paying for the drugs, Bradford Crown Court heard.

Shafi, of Sunnybank Avenue, Thornbury, Bradford, was caught with £1,000 worth of heroin and crack cocaine on him, £342 in cash and a dealer phone.

The court heard he was spotted by the police behaving suspiciously in Sutton Road, Tyersal, Bradford, on January 26 last year.

He pleaded guilty to possession of crack cocaine and heroin with intent to supply.

Shafi had 37 previous convictions for 79 offences, including matters of dishonesty and being jailed in 2013 for trafficking Class A drugs.

His barrister, Jeremy Barton, said he had been addicted to heroin for 30 years and felt stuck in a situation he couldn’t get out of.

The court heard that he was well aware of the misery that drugs caused people.

He had a safe and stable address and was on Universal Credit because he suffered with COPD.

Mr Barton said it was ‘a sad state of affairs’ that Shafi’s drug addiction had taken up so much of his life. He had occasionally managed to abstain but turned back to drugs because of stress and anxiety.

He was unwell and ‘feared he had little time left on this planet,’ the court was told.

He asked for mercy while staring at the prospect of a prison sentence.

If he didn’t stop using drugs, ‘his premonition that his life would end early would no doubt come true,’ Mr Barton said.

Shafi was buying and selling small amounts of drugs. He wasn’t cutting or mixing them himself so the weight and purity of the deals varied.

Recorder James Baird told him: “It was your business. It was what you were doing to feed your addiction and pay off very substantial debts.”

Shafi had already served a lengthy prison sentence imposed in 2013 for possession with intent of Class A drugs.

Recorder Baird said he could not exceed to Mr Barton’s submissions and spare Shafi an immediate prison sentence.

He took a 45 month starting point and knocked off credit for his guilty pleas and made a further reduction to take account of the mitigation, reaching a jail term of 40 months.