75-year-old ‘mastermind’ of a 2005 armed robbery that killed a British police officer serving a life sentence

A 75-year-old man will spend the rest of his life in prison after being convicted Friday of the murder of a British police officer who was shot dead during an armed robbery in northern England nearly two decades ago.

Piran Ditta Khan was convicted in April for fleeing the country to Pakistan shortly after the murder of Sharon Beshenivsky. He was extradited to the UK last year.

Judge Nicholas Hilliard sentenced him to life imprisonment at Leeds Crown Court and called for a minimum term of 40 years.

“You will inevitably spend the rest of your life in prison, but that is a consequence of convicting a man of your age for a crime of this particular gravity,” he said. “You spent your younger and healthier years in freedom because you chose to leave the country when you feared being arrested.”

Although Khan remained in the guard van during the November 2005 robbery of the family-run Universal Express travel agency in the city of Bradford, prosecutors argued that he was the “mastermind” behind the robbery, organizing it and purchasing the weapons. Police officers in the UK do not carry weapons on routine patrols.

“Although he did not fire the fatal shot, his actions stole a life together from Sharon and those who knew her, and as he is sentenced today, our thoughts are with her family and loved ones,” said Special Prosecutor David Holderness.

Beshenivsky was 38 and had only been in office nine months when she responded to an alert about the robbery. She was shot at close range by one of the three men who committed the robbery. Her colleague Teresa Milburn survived after being shot in the chest.

Beshenivsky, who had three children and two stepchildren, was shot on her youngest daughter’s fourth birthday. In a victim’s personal statement read out in court, Beshenivsky’s daughter Lydia said she was “too young and innocent” to understand what happened when her mother didn’t come home from work to celebrate her birthday.

“There will always be a void in my life – a void that should have been filled by my mother’s presence, but because of the violent, callous actions of you, Piran Ditta Khan, and your associates that day, you have left me with a future robbed of valuable time with my mother,” she said. “Every birthday is a reminder of what happened that day.”

Paul Beshenivsky, who was married to his wife for four years when she died, said telling the children what happened was “the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

Khan fled to Pakistan two months after the robbery. He was arrested by local authorities in Pakistan in January 2020 and extradited to the UK last year.

Khan denied the allegations.