Police have revealed what was uncovered when they smashed their way into Nottingham’s biggest-ever cannabis factory last year.
Two brothers have each been jailed for five-and-a-half years after admitting producing up to £3.5m of the drug in the hidden farm.
Mohammed Anwar, 33, and Mohammed Imran, 38, both of St George’s Rise, Bradford, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to produce cannabis between June 1 and August 6 last year, when they appeared at Nottingham Crown Court yesterday (February 13).
Officers discovered 4,049 cannabis plants with a street value of between £1m and £3.5m inside Palmerston House in Mount Street, New Basford, when they carried out a search of the property in August last year.
Seven Vietnamese men were found to be tending to the crops inside the former paper mill.
The entrances had been bricked up and the fire escape stairs cut off to prevent them leaving and the only access was via a service lift that the gang controlled.
Initially charges had been laid under the Modern Slavery Act but the prosecution decided not to continue with these.
Officers carried out the search after the factory’s owner called police to say he believed there was some suspicious activity.
Detective Inspector Gareth Harding, of Nottinghamshire Police, said: “It was an industrial scale operation that would have yielded an incredible amount of drugs that would have been sold on the streets of Nottinghamshire and elsewhere. It is the largest cannabis grow ever found in Nottingham.
“The investigation team worked incredibly hard to secure the convictions. I hope this serves as a warning to other criminal gangs that think Nottingham is a place that they would like to set up operations.”
