A 75-year-old man has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison for the murder of British police officer Sharon Beshenivsky, who was shot dead during an armed robbery in northern England almost 20 years ago. Piran Ditta Khan, who was convicted in April, fled to Pakistan after the murder and was extradited back to the U.K. last year.
Judge Nicholas Hilliard handed down a life imprisonment sentence at Leeds Crown Court, with a minimum term of 40 years in prison. Despite Khan not firing the fatal shot during the robbery at a family-run travel agents in Bradford in 2005, prosecutors argued that he was the 'mastermind' behind the crime, organizing it and purchasing the weapons used.
Specialist prosecutor David Holderness expressed that Khan's actions had deprived Sharon Beshenivsky and her loved ones of a lifetime together. Beshenivsky, who was only nine months into the job, was fatally shot at point-blank range during the robbery, while her colleague Teresa Milburn survived being shot in the chest.
Beshenivsky, a mother of three children and two stepchildren, was killed on her youngest daughter's fourth birthday. Her daughter Lydia, in a victim personal statement, expressed the void left in her life due to the violent actions of Khan and his associates. Paul Beshenivsky, Sharon's husband, described the difficulty of informing their children about the tragic event.
Khan fled to Pakistan shortly after the robbery and was apprehended by local authorities in 2020 before being extradited to the U.K. last year. Despite denying the allegations, Khan will spend the remainder of his life behind bars for the grave crime he orchestrated almost two decades ago.
