A man extradited from Pakistan has been formally charged in connection with the murder of Police Constable Sharon Beshenivsky in Bradford on 18 November 2005.
Piran Ditta Khan, 74, was extradited from Pakistan on Tuesday, 12 April 2023 and after arriving in the UK was taken into custody at a West Yorkshire police station, where he was formally charged.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) authorised charges in 2006 against Mr Khan with six offences including, murder, robbery, two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and two counts of possession of a prohibited weapon. The CPS submitted an extradition warrant in 2006.
He appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday, 13 April 2023.
The extradition was the result of collaborative work between the CPS, Pakistani authorities, West Yorkshire Police and the National Crime Agency.
Joanne Jakymec, Chief Crown Prosecutor for the CPS, said: “A suspect wanted in connection with the murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky in Bradford in 2005 has been extradited to the UK from Pakistan thanks to the continued hard work of prosecutors in the CPS’s Extradition and International Units.
“Since Piran Ditta Khan was arrested in Pakistan in 2020, our specialist prosecutors have been working closely with our Pakistani partners to complete the legal process in the country so that he could be extradited back to England to face the allegations from almost 20 years ago.”
About PC Sharon Beshenivsky’s murder
PC Beshenivsky was gunned down while responding to a robbery at a travel agent in Bradford in November 2005. The 38-year-old mother of three children and two stepchildren had only served nine months with West Yorkshire Police when she died. She became the seventh serving female officer ever to be killed in the line of duty in Britain at the time of her death, and was killed on her daughter’s fourth birthday.
Two men, Muzzaker Imtiaz Shah and Yusuf Abdullah Jama, were sentenced to life in prison in 2006 over the shooting of PC Beshenivsky. Shah admitted murder but denied firing the shot which killed PC Beshenivsky, while Jama was convicted of murder after he told the court he shot the officer by accident.
A third man, Faisal Razzaq, a 25-year-old from London, was cleared of murder but found guilty of manslaughter. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 11 years.
A year later, in 2007, a fourth man, Hassan Razzaq, the 26-year-old brother of Faisal, was also convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
A fifth man, Mustaf Jama, the brother of Yusuf Jama, was extradited from Somalia in 2007 and found guilty of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 35 years behind bars.
