Pc Sharon Beshenivsky raid mastermind guilty of murder
The mastermind of an armed robbery that ended in a police officer being shot dead has been found guilty of murder.
Piran Ditta Khan has been convicted almost 20 years after Pc Sharon Beshenivsky, inset, was killed while interrupting a raid at familyrun 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 pointblank 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.
The 75-year-old 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.
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 the murder of Pc Beshenivsky, inset, “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.
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.
The raiders demanded £100,000, jurors heard, but Waqas Yousaf, Mohammad Yousaf 's son, told the robbers they did not have that kind of money and managed to press an alarm which alerted the police.
Pc Beshenivsky and Pc Milburn, who were about to finish their shift, responded to the alert, the trial was told.
The robbers shouted “the Feds are here” before fleeing with around £5,400, with one of them gunning down the officers as they approached the doors of Universal Express.
Khan was convicted of murder by a majority of 10-1 after 11 jurors deliberated for almost 19 hours over four days.
He was also found guilty of two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life, also by a majority of 10-1. He was unanimously convicted of two counts of possession of a prohibited weapon.
He has pleaded guilty to robbery.
Pc Beshenivsky, 38, who had three children and two stepchildren, had only been an officer for nine months when she died from her injuries.
Pc Milburn, who survived being shot in the chest, said the pair “didn’t have a chance” to get away from the gunman.