LAW lords have ruled that a Blackburn man - involved in a gun battle between rival gangs - has been treated too harshly.

Wajid Hussain, now 32, was one of several people sentenced at Preston over a violent confrontation between two opposing factions which ended with a shot being fired between two vehicles in Oswaldtwistle.

The Court of Appeal heard Hussain was a passenger in a convoy of cars which went looking for revenge after his friends were threatened with a handgun and rifle, in a dispute over a woman.

Judges were told Hussain’s gang descended on Village Car Sales in Blackburn but he didn’t get out of the car.

Brandishing bats, his co-defendants smashed windows at the showroom before driving off, the court heard.

Convoy members then went hunting for a black Range Rover, belonging to their rivals, which they eventually tracked down.

But at one point, the court was told, the Range Rover pulled clear of the chasing pack and a shot was fired towards one of their vehicles.

This shot went through a Mitsubishi and eventually became embedded in the front door of a house in Stanhill Road.

For his part in the violence, for which he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit violent disorder, Hussain, of Walter Street, Blackburn, was jailed for 30 months.

His Blackburn associate Jibran Bashir, then 26, of Pringle Street, was also jailed for 30 months for the same offence.

Adeel Ahmad, then 26, of Audley Range, was jailed for 22-and-a-half months, Shahid Hussain, then 24, of Sussex Close, was jailed for 20 months and Abdul Kayum, then 28, of Whitendale Crescent, for 24 months.

Gul Nawaz Hussain QC, representing Wajid Hussain, said it was clear Jibran Bashir was more involved with the initial violence at Village Car Sales, yet his client, who remained in the car, had received the same prison sentence.

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Kayum was also the driver of the Mitsubishi in the ensuing chase, he added, and he had been given a lesser sentence by a judge.

Allowing Wajid Hussain’s appeal and reducing his prison term from 30 to 24 months, Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde, sitting with Mr Justice Martin Spencer and Judge Mark Wall QC, said “En route to Village Cars this appellant thought there was to be nothing more than a fair fight between two men and only saw weapons when they left the showroom later.”