A FATHER caught with a Taser disguised as a torch has claimed he had been sent it after ordering a child's laser gun toy online, a court heard.

But Mohsun Akbar, 30, had been found with two other stun guns, in a car he had just bought, five months earlier, Burnley Crown Court was told.

Akbar told probation officer Peter Slater he had placed an order for a children's laser gun toy, before he was sent the third Taser, from the online selling platform Wish.

Mr Slater told the court that - "to his surprise" - it was apparently possible, from his own checks, to place an order for a stun gun, disguised as a torch, from the site.

Akbar, formerly of Richmond Road, Accrington, but now of Kings Road, Ashton-under-Lyne, had pleaded guilty at an earlier court hearing to three offences of possession of a weapon designed for the discharge of an electric spark.

Two of the charges related to March 22 last year and the third, relating to an 'electronic incapacitation device', dated back to August 9 that year.

Defence counsel Mark Stuart said his client insisted he had documentation proving that he had placed an order for the child's toy.

He told the court the defendant had an account with Wish and that was how he had ended up with the third Taser. He accepted he had kept the weapon afterwards.

Judge Stuart Baker said that Akbar had pleaded guilty to the first two offences on a limited basis.

The stun guns were discovered in a car he had acquired a short time earlier, the court heard.

Judge Baker said: "It is somewhere between being a custodian and finding them.

"It seems to me he is saying that he didn't know that the stun guns were there until he took possession of the vehicle, then having found them he was only in possession of them for half an hour."

But the judge said that the defendant's position, for sentencing purposes, would be entirely different if he was found to have ordered the third Taser online, having already been on bail on charges of holding the first two devices, for however brief a period.

Akbar was bailed until June 21 so further enquiries could be made by defence solicitors regarding his online purchase.

Judge Baker also ordered further enquiries to be made concerning any online comments which may have been made by the defendant at the time of placing the order, to determine his intentions.