POLICE have landed a hammer blow in their war on drugs after a judge jailed the final member of a powerful narcotics gang capable of flooding Reading’s streets with nearly half a million pounds worth of heroin.

Abdul Khan was described as “in charge of the purse strings” of the professional Skelton Court gang as he was sent down for 12-and-a-half years at Reading Crown Court on Tuesday. The 29-year-old was the last of four conspirators to be imprisoned for their part in the plot after pleading guilty to conspiracy to supply heroin.

The court heard how, just before midnight on October 15, 2012, two police officers investigating a noise complaint stumbled upon the gang’s production line at a flat in Skelton Court, off Tilehurst Road. The officers found £450,000 of the drug bundled up in carrier bags as well as food blenders, electronic scales, £7,500 in cash and even a recipe for making the drug attached to the fridge.

Zulfaqar Khan, 30, of Riverside Park, Tilehurst, Zafran Ashraf, 31, of Greenidge Close, Coley Park and Harry Carmichael, 25, of Auckland Road, east Reading, were jailed for a combined total of 35 years earlier this month.

Judge Ross said: “It was a copper’s hunch that took them on to find this production line. There was very limited evidence of the flat being used to live in.

“There was evidence of both upstream and downstream activity. There was a block of heroin not yet cut with paracetamol, caffeine, codeine and at a much higher concentration. Then at a much lower concentration there was some that had been cut ready for street dealing.”

Abdul Khan, formerly of Eskin Close, Tilehurst, was also snared by undercover officers as part of a crackdown on street dealing - dubbed Operation Sumac - last summer while he was still on police bail over the Skelton Court raid. He boasted he could sell them up to 7kg of heroin, at £34,000 per kilo.

Defending, Timothy Raggatt QC said: “Mr Khan has elderly parents both of whom are sick and they have two sons now who are in custody for substantial periods.

"There is an indication that over the passage of time there has been some dawning of realisation of what this all leads to and the loss and damage it causes to his family. It is imperative that someone shows those signs and he is showing those signs in a truly positive way.”