Chief suspect in WPC’s murder 14 years ago is held in Pakistan
The alleged mastermind of an armed robbery in which a policewoman was murdered has finally been arrested 14 years on.
Piran Ditta Khan, 71, appeared in court in Pakistan yesterday and is set to be extradited to face trial over the murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky.
The 38-year-old officer was gunned down while responding to the raid on a travel agency in Bradford in november 2005.
Police have always vowed to hunt down all those involved and bring them to justice. Khan, a former club doorman, is thought to have been living 5,000 miles away in Pakistan for many years.
yesterday the dead officer’s widower Paul Beshenivsky welcomed the arrest and said he looked forward to seeing Khan ‘face to face’ in a British court. The landscape builder said: ‘It’s good that the police have never forgotten about it. It’s hard for us though because we are going to have to live through it all again.
‘I have always been aware that this man was wanted by police and every so often I would get a call, saying they think they are close or that they had found the right man and then it turned out that they hadn’t.
‘I have been told this is going to be a long process and that it could actually take two years to get him to the UK.’
Mrs Beshenivsky was killed on the fourth birthday of her daughter and youngest child Lydia. She turned 18 last year.
her husband, who married Michelle Sherbourne, his children’s former nanny, three years ago, said the new development would be hard on Lydia because she was too young to remember what happened and must now live through it as an adult.
The couple’s other child, 21-yearold Paul, remembers his mother’s murder. Mr Beshenivsky said: ‘I’m hoping this may bring us some kind of closure.’
The widower has two other children from his first marriage and
Mrs Beshenivsky had a son from an earlier relationship.
She was shot dead and her colleague Teresa Milburn seriously injured as the raiders fled the Universal express agency with £5,000. Both officers were unarmed and Mrs Beshenivsky had been a police officer for just nine months.
Six men have been convicted and jailed for the robbery – three of them for murder. A reward of £20,000 was offered for information leading to Khan’s arrest and detectives issued a fresh appeal to find him in 2016.
An operation involving authorities in Pakistan and the UK national Crime Agency was carried out in secret and led to the suspect’s arrest on Tuesday.
When he was detained, Khan was staying at the Islamabad home of a relative who is a civil servant with the Central Board of Revenue, a government organisation that investigates tax crimes.
he appeared in court in the Pakistani capital yesterday and extradition proceedings, which could take many months, will now begin. he has been remanded in custody.
West yorkshire Police are confident of having their suspect returned following the successful extradition from Pakistan in 2018 of a man wanted for the murders of a family of eight in a house fire 16 years earlier.
Detective Superintendent Mark Swift said: ‘I would like to thank the national Crime Agency officford ers in Pakistan and partners who have made this arrest possible.
‘This is a major development in this long-running investigation and their assistance in this matter should not be understated.
‘We are continuing to liaise with partners in Pakistan to process Khan’s extradition.’
Khan has repeatedly been accused of being the mastermind’ of the robbery. he moved to Bradfrom Pakistan when he was 18 and worked in the town’s mills.
Speaking about Khan back in 2006, a family member said: ‘his head was turned by money and he was obsessed by ways of getting rich quickly. A girlfriend of his had a brother who was a well-known robber and that is when it all started going wrong.’
Khan was living with his wife and six children in north London when the killing took place.
In 2006 Muzzaker Shah admitted murdering Mrs Beshenivsky and was jailed for at least 35 years. yusuf Jama was found guilty of murder and given the same life term. A third raider, Mustaf Jama, was seized in 2007 in a dramatic raid in Somalia.
he was also jailed for a minimum of 35 years for the same offence.
Others involved as lookouts or planners were Faisal Razzaq and his brother hassan, who were given a minimum of 11 and 20 years respectively for manslaughter. Raza ul haq Aslam was jailed for eight years for robbery.
‘Live through it all again’ ‘This may bring us closure’