Fugitive brought back to the UK after two decades is found guilty of murdering ... trends now
The mastermind of an armed robbery that ended in a police officer being shot dead has been found guilty of her murder.
Piran Ditta Khan, 75, has been convicted almost 20 years after PC Sharon Beshenivsky was killed while interrupting a raid at family-run Universal Express travel agents in Bradford, West Yorkshire, in November 2005.
She and her colleague PC Teresa Milburn, who were both unarmed, were shot at point-blank range by one of the three men who had just carried out the robbery as he emerged from the door of the business.
Almost two decades on, Khan is the last of the seven men involved in the robbery to be convicted.
Khan flew to Pakistan two months after PC Beshenivsky's death and remained at liberty there until he was arrested by Pakistani authorities in January 2020 and then extradited to the UK last year.
Piran Ditta Khan has been found guilty at Leeds Crown Court of the murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky, 38
PC Sharon Beshenivsky (pictured) was fatally shot in November 2005 as she and her colleague responded to a report of a robbery in Bradford, West Yorkshire
Prosecutors said former takeaway boss Khan was the group's ringleader and, although he did not leave the safety of a lookout car during the raid, played a 'pivotal' role in planning it and knew that loaded firearms were to be used.
They told jurors this made him guilty of PC Beshenivsky's murder 'as surely as if he had pulled the trigger on that pistol himself'.
He was the only one of the group who was familiar with Universal Express and had used them in the past to send money to family in Pakistan, the court heard.
Khan told jurors he had no knowledge that a robbery was going to be carried out, or that weapons were going to be taken.
He claimed the business's owner, Mohammmad Yousaf, owed him £12,000 and that debt collector Hassan Razzaq offered to get his money back after the pair met through a business associate.
Khan said he thought the men Razzaq sent would 'intimidate' the staff at Universal Express, or at worst, 'slap them'.
Prosecutor Robert Smith KC said Khan's claim of being defrauded was an 'entirely false' attempt to explain why he was in Bradford at the time of the robbery and murder.
