TWO dealers have been locked up for a total of seven years for their parts in a plot said to involve the potential supply of heroin worth £170,000.

Addicts Shahid Ansar, 22, and Ishfaq Hussain, 25, both played important roles to feed their own habits. Ansar had made £400 over six months.

His accomplice moved away from the Nelson area and carried on drug dealing while he knew the police were hunting him, a court heard.

Burnley Crown Court was told how in March police arrested another man in May Street, Barrowford.

He kept the key to a vehicle parked outside, in which two kilos of cutting agents and a 24.9 gram stash of heroin were found.

Cutting agents, mixed with heroin, could potentially have produced drugs worth £170,000 on the streets.

The hearing was told members of the gang, said to include others, knew police were likely to find the key and attempted to get it by smashing the windows of another vehicle.

Plotters tried to move the drugs vehicle away on a low loader and to lure police away from the area to Brierfield with a decoy.

Two distraction calls were made to the police. The second came from a phone found hidden in some baby toys at Ansar's home.

When he was arrested officers found £1,000 cash in a bedroom and £4,000 in a safe concealed in a chimney breast.

Ansar had owned up on the basis he was to hold the dealing phones.

The defendant, of St Paul's Road, Nelson, and Hussain, of Brierdale Road, Bradford, both admitted conspiracy to supply heroin, between December 15, 2011 and April 22, 2013.

Ansar was jailed for three years.

His co-defendant, who carried on supplying, in Bradford, and had a stun gun, was sent to prison for four years.

Hussain also pleaded guilty to possessing heroin with intent to supply and possessing a prohibited weapon, on August 15.

Both face a Proceeds of Crime Hearing at a later date.

Prosecutor Joe Boyd said that the undercover police were deployed in the Nelson area from June to September, last year.

Sentencing, Judge Beverley Lunt said both def-endants were actively involved in the conspiracy.

She told them: “You both played a significant role.

“You have no relevant previous convictions.

You both express remorse.”