A SELf-confessed Rowley Regis murderer told a court it was never his intention to harm a Birmingham man who owed him thousands of pounds from a cannabis racket.

Stuart Millership claimed he was drunk and high on cocaine when two Albanians battered and stabbed to death 50-year-old Baljit Singh before his body was hidden in the cellar of his home.

Millership, who admitted he was a regular drug user said: “I did not strike him any blows with a weapon. I did not have a metal bar or any other form of blunt instrument.”

The 33-year-old, who had been involved in a plot with Mr Singh to grow large quantities of cannabis went on,

“I did not have the knife that was used to stab him.”

He said in evidence to Wolverhampton Crown Court that Mr Singh also owed money to the Albanians after a cannabis

Crop, being cultivated in a house in Hagley, had gone missing.

Millership said he had not anticipated any trouble when the Albanians called at the Beeches Road house where he lived with his girlfriend.

During a Newton Hearing to establish the basis of his guilty plea, after the prosecution refused to accept his version of events, Millership said the pair, whose full names he did not know, were aggressive and one of them starting punching Mr Singh.

He said: “I was drunk and high on cocaine and I was angry myself.

“I did not want to hurt him but I went along with it. I was angry because he had been leading people on for the last few months.”

He said he had been behind Mr Singh, who disappeared from his Birmingham home after going to collect a cake for his son’s ninth birthday, and held his arms down.

“I saw some kind of silver steel instrument or something like that,” said Millership. “The violence continued. It was repeated blows to the head and to the face.

“As soon as I saw the weapon I let go. I saw it had gone too far. I wanted nothing else to do with it. I was just hoping to get out - to get away.”

Millership said he kicked out at the one Albanian’s knocking him over a settee before going out the back door after picking up the keys to Mr Singh’s £15,000 Range Rover.

He has admitted murdering Mr Singh, of Meadow Road, Harborne, but on the basis that it was a joint enterprise and that he had struck no blows to the man whose body was found in the cellar on New Year’s Day.

Judge John Warner is due to announce his findings later this week after which he will sentence Millership, who is set to be jailed for life.