A father-of-five who was left for dead after being savagely beaten by members of a notorious drugs gang has himself been jailed for six years.

In 2002, 50-year-old Daniel Francis was dumped from a car on a country lane in Wilsden, with shattered legs and arms and a fractured face, after he was accused of stealing drugs from Waheed Akhtar, a drugs baron known then as "The Colonel".

Francis, of Wren Avenue, Scholemoor, had always denied taking the drugs, but he and two others were rounded up by a gang of Akhtar's "minions" and taken to a warehouse off Thornton Road.

In six hours of torture, Francis was beaten with a cricket bat and had a gun put to his head. Another man, Naveed Younis, was strung up with a noose around his neck and stabbed in the chest. A woman, Lisa Galloway, was stripped, beaten with a wheel brace and indecently assaulted. She died a year later after plunging from a window of her high-rise flat in Manchester Road.

Francis, Galloway and Younis gave evidence against the torture gang and Akhtar and his three cohorts were jailed for a total of 91 years in 2003.

Yesterday, Francis's barrister, Andrew Semple, said he was terrified he would come across his torturers in jail.

He said: "He is perhaps understandably in great fear that when his custodial sentence starts he will come across the individuals he gave evidence against."

Bradford Crown Court heard yesterday that Francis faced jail under the "three strikes" rule because of previous drug-offending.

A year ago he was given an 18-month jail term, suspended for two years, for possessing eight "rocks" of crack cocaine with intent to supply.

Just 20 days after that sentence was passed Francis, who walks with the aid of two sticks after the attack on him, was stopped in a car with another man and found to be in possession of crack cocaine and heroin worth more than £2,500.

Francis pleaded guilty to possessing the Class A drugs with intent to supply on the basis that the other man had brought the drugs to his home and he was helping to transport them to someone else.

The court heard that Francis also had another drug supplying conviction dating back to 1994 when he received a six-year prison sentence, which meant he faced a mandatory jail term of up to seven years under the so-called "three strikes" legislation.

But The Honorary Recorder of Bradford Judge Stephen Gullick said he could discount that sentence because of early guilty pleas and instead he jailed Francis for a total of six years, made up of a sentence for the latest offences and part of the suspended 18-month sentence on top.

"As your counsel has graphically stated you represent in many senses an example of the evils of drugs of all sorts," Judge Gullick told Francis.

"You have been a drug user for many years. You have been a drug supplier on occasion and you suffered grievous injuries at the hands of those who were employed by another drug dealer who believed you had stolen some of his drugs.

"The injuries you received in 2002 were horrendous in terms of their severity. In due course you gave evidence against those who had inflicted those injuries and perhaps it is a measure of the extent of those injuries, and other indignities that were done to you, that the principal accused received a sentence of 25 years imprisonment."

Mr Semple outlined details of Francis's medical problems in relation to both his legs, but Judge Gullick noted that the suspended sentence passed a year ago was no doubt imposed bearing in mind his condition at the time.

"One would have hoped that the sentence passed on the 18th of February, 2005, would have brought home to you, given your experiences over the past 20 years, the need to keep away from Class A drugs," added Judge Gullick.

Mr Semple told the court that bone grafts carried out on Francis's right leg had not taken and at one stage it was feared that the leg would have to be amputated after he contracted MRSA.

Fortunately he began to recover, but he then developed further problems with his damaged left leg which had then been operated on.

Mr Semple said his client had gone back to using crack cocaine as the only way of relieving the pain, but he maintained the drugs found in his possession did not belong to him.