The moment five kilos of heroin disappeared from the boot of Waheed Akhtar's car it was plain someone would end up paying dearly.

The 46-year-old was one of Bradford's largest heroin traffickers and there was no way he could disregard losing £250,000 of the drug. And money was not the only issue at stake.

Akhtar, known as the Colonel, was established as a main player in the city's criminal underworld and his reputation would not allow the betrayal to go unpunished. He needed to make an example of the thief or his enemies would seize upon such a sign of weakness.

At the same time, his powerful London connections, who had their own stake in the shipment, would demand action or Akhtar himself would face the consequences.

The Colonel immediately realised it was no chance theft because the Toyota Corolla outside his Acton Street home was undamaged. Whoever stole the drugs used the key - and this suggested it was someone close to him.

Indeed an associate Daniel Francis, better known as African, had earlier warned of a plot to rip him off. Within minutes of discovering the theft, Akhtar put his 'investigation' into motion.

The chief suspects - drug users Naveed Younis and a woman - were summoned to his terraced home where they were quizzed, but then released. The following day, the woman returned to Akhtar's house to clear her name once and for all. But his right-hand man Azhar Mahmood had already assembled an 'interrogation squad' from Manchester who bundled her into a car and drove her to a house in Burnley. There she was stripped, beaten, forced to take heroin and drink alcohol before their brutal questioning began.

Meanwhile, Younis, widely known as 'Niddy', was again summoned to Acton Street where the moment he walked through the door, Akhtar and Shazan Sikander - the London arm of national drugs ring - lashed out with baseball bats and sticks. They shoved their bleeding victim into the boot of Akhtar's Mercedes and drove to his house in Washington Street, Girlington, where a search for the consignment proved fruitless.

Akthar, now becoming increasingly desperate, ordered that both 'suspects' were brought to a warehouse he rented at Try Mills in Thornton Road where they were immediately tied to chairs. One men, Sagir Alam, shouted at the woman "Where are the drugs?" and hit her with a heavy wheel brace. When it bent with the force of the blow he burst into laughter. At the same time, the gang began 'working' on Younis with a scaffold pole, a snooker queue and batons.

And so began a horrendous sequence of interrogation and beatings lasting at least six hours. At one point, the gang even tied a noose around Younis's neck and carried out a mock hanging.

"In the end, they sat the pair opposite each other and told them to argue out between them to see who was telling the truth," said Det Sgt Chris Walker, who led the investigation.

It was then that the name of Francis, who had been watching proceedings, was first mentioned. "He immediately became a suspect and the others began beating him to a pulp," said Det Sgt Walker. "He was knocked unconscious but when he fell to the floor they continued hitting him with a scaffold pole and whipping him with a length of wire."

Det Sgt Walker said: "When he got to hospital, medical staff thought he had been run over. At one point he technically died and had to be resuscitated."

By 7am, Akhtar needed to get rid of the bloodied trio before neighbouring businesses spotted them. They were bundled into cars and dumped at various spots across the district. The woman found herself close to Bradford Royal Infirmary while Younis was left near his family home in Girlington.

Francis, whose huge loss of blood had lead to hypothermia, was thrown out behind a mound of earth at a rural spot in Wilsden. Det Sgt Walker said: "It was 9.30am before a passer-by spotted him totally by chance. He was very close to death at that time and would not have survived much longer."

As detectives began tracing suspects, Akhtar fled to his native Pakistan, only to return in January. But before he gave himself up to police, he offered the victims £50,000 and foreign holidays to change their statements - and even had new versions typed for them.

Det Sgt Walker said: "This was someone who portrayed himself as a respectable businessmen who bought and sold cars and imported bottled water from Pakistan. But the fact of the matter was he was a top-level trafficker who used the businesses as a front for his drugs empire.

"Akhtar had a lot of respect and held a lot of influence. He had a great many contacts in that criminal field."

Detective Sergeant David Monaghan-Jones is pictured with items used in the torture.