Police wearing body armour used a battering ram to smash their way into the house in Wigan Road, Bryn. Inside they discovered this room and three others upstairs filled with 400 cannabis plants.

One man, thought to be Vietnamese, attempted to escape through the back but officers had the exit covered and he was led handcuffed to a police van.

Inside the house under the intense glare of heat lamps, line after line of cannabis plants covered one entire room on the ground floor. Three bedrooms were also being used to grow the drug.

Organised Vietnamese and Chinese drugs gangs are increasingly renting houses to use as cannabis factories and yesterday's find in Wigan is suspected to be part of a much larger crime operation. In recent months cannabis factories have been discovered in Beech Hill, Swinley, Whitley and Ashton. In each case people of Oriental origin had been seen visiting the properties.

In the latest raid, nearby residents became suspicious of activities at the house and tipped off police.