Sharon Beshenivsky: mastermind behind robbery found guilty of PC’s murder

The mastermind of an armed robbery in which a police officer, Sharon Beshenivsky, was killed has been convicted of her murder after evading capture for 17 years.

Piran Ditta Khan, now 75, fled to Pakistan two months after the fatal shooting in Bradford in November 2005. The former takeaway boss was tracked down and arrested in January 2020 before being extradited to the UK last year.

Khan, who listened to proceedings with the help of an interpreter, was the last of the seven robbers to go on trial.

He was found guilty on Thursday of PC Beshenivsky’s murder as well as four firearms charges after a six-week trial at Leeds crown court.

Khan, who admitted robbery, said he had organised the raid on Universal Express travel agents because the owner, who has since died, owed him money. The prosecution said this was “entirely false” and told jurors the defendant had planned the robbery with a view to stealing up to £100,000.

Khan said he had no idea that guns, including a Mac-10 submachine gun, were to be used in the raid.

However, jurors were told that his lead role in the plot was such that he was as guilty as murder “as surely as if he pulled the trigger himself”.

Beshenivsky, 38, had been an officer for only nine months when she and a colleague, PC Teresa Milburn, responded to an alarm call at Universal Express on 18 November 2005.

CCTV footage played in court showed the two officers making their way across the city centre when they were confronted by three of the robbers.

Milburn recalled seeing two men struggling with the door of the travel agents while trying to get out before one of the three pointed a pistol at Beshenivsky and opened fire at point blank range.

The gunman then turned his weapon on Milburn, shooting her in the chest. The then-37-year-old officer managed to activate a Code Zero alarm call – signifying an officer has been injured – after collapsing on the pavement.

Beshenivsky died instantly. She had been only minutes from the end of her shift, when she was due to go home to celebrate her daughter’s fourth birthday.

The murder sent shock waves through policing in Britain and remains one of the most heinous attacks on officers in the line of duty nearly 20 years on.

Six of the robbers had been convicted years ago for their various roles on the day. But it was not until April last year when detectives felt the finish line on the nearly two-decade long investigation was in sight.

The circumstances of how Khan was tracked down by police in Pakistan remain a mystery. He was reported as long ago as 2006 to have been hiding out in a remote village in the Jhelum district, in the north of the country, where he was said to have turned to religion, grown a beard and helped build a mosque.

The trail then seemed to go quiet until he was arrested in January 2020, spending the next three years in custody in Pakistan before being extradited to the UK.

The former doorman, who was known as “Uncle” to some of the robbers because he was older, had been planning to open a takeaway in Aberdeen months before the robbery.

He was the only one of the seven men with intimate knowledge of Universal Express, the jury was told, because he had used it in the past to send money to family in Pakistan.

The men panicked when they saw on the television news on the night of the robbery that one of the police officers had died.

Khan, who had orchestrated the plan, fled for Islamabad on a flight from London Heathrow in January 2006, two months after the shooting, leaving behind his wife and six children.

In a statement after the conviction, West Yorkshire police Det Supt Marc Bowes said: “Today as always our thoughts remain with PC Sharon Beshenivsky and her family. Sharon went to work to protect the public, she responded to a call for help alongside her colleague Teresa but tragically never came home.

“This verdict is the culmination of 18 years of hard work, tenacious grit and determination to bring Khan before the courts.”

Khan, who showed no emotion when the verdicts were given, will be sentenced at a later date.