DEAD GIVEAWAY
Gang boss behind PC Sharon Beshenivsky killing led millionaire’s lifestyle after faking his own death & fleeing the UK
Cops revealed how they caught out the gang boss
A GANG boss who killed a police officer led a millionaire's lifestyle after faking his own death and fleeing the UK.
Piran Ditta Khan, now 75, was yesterday found guilty of murdering PC Sharon Beshenivsky - and on at least two occasions cops received "intelligence" claiming he had died in Pakistan.
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In reality, however, the married takeaway owner was living the high life, having set himself up as a property developer.
PC Beshenivsky, 38, was gunned down while responding to an armed robbery at a travel agents in Bradford, West Yorkshire, in 2005.
Her colleague PC Teresa Milburn, who was 37 at the time, was left seriously injured after a gunman opened fire "indiscriminately" as he fled the scene.
Khan admitted robbery, and was also found guilty of two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and two counts of possession of a prohibited weapon.
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Seven men have been found guilty over the botched robbery, which saw the gang flee with just £5,000.
Footage released by police yesterday shows the two PCs walking towards the shop before the shooting.
Three men can then be seen running across the road and fleeing the scene in a convoy of cars.
Separate footage also shows the moment grey-haired Khan, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2020, was finally charged with murder after being brought back to the UK in April 2023.
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Leeds Crown Court was told he was not one of the three men who carried out the raid and did not shoot the mum, who had three children and two stepchildren but was "pivotal" in its planning.
Ex Detective Superintendent Andy Brennan, who led the hunt for PC Beshenivsky's killers, including robbery "organiser" Khan, said initially they were told he had died in a road traffic accident.
Timeline of horror - how seven men have been brought to justice
- November 2003: Sharon Beshenivsky joins West Yorkshire Police as a Police Community Support Officer.
- February 2005: She becomes a serving police officer with West Yorkshire Police.
- November 13 2005: Piran Ditta Khan and Hassan Razzaq travel from London to carry out reconnaissance on Universal Express travel agents in Morley Street, Bradford.
- November 17: Four of the group gather at a "safe house" on Harehills Lane, Leeds, where they party on champagne and vodka, and visit a brothel.
- November 18, 7am: Pc Beshenivsky, 38, and Pc Teresa Milburn, 37, begin their day from Bradford Central police station.
3pm: Three men posing as customers go in to Universal Express travel agents, before brandishing weapons, assaulting staff and demanding money before threatening to "shoot the youngest".
3.26pm: Waqas Yousaf manages to trigger a silent alarm. Police are alerted and Pc Beshenivsky and Pc Milburn respond to the report. As they approach the door a gunman emerges from the premises and shoots both officers before firing indiscriminately on the way to a getaway car. The robbers escape with a little over £5,000.
3.32pm: Officers at West Yorkshire Police's control room receive a Code Zero call, indicating a colleague has been shot. Officers arrive within minutes and Pc Beshenivsky is taken to hospital but cannot be saved.
- November 20: Paul Beshenivsky, Pc Beshenivsky's widower, arrives at the scene of the shooting to lay flowers.
- November 20: Pc Milburn is released from hospital.
- November 25: Police name three men they want in connection with the murder and issue photos of Muzzaker Shah, and brothers Mustaf and Yusuf Jama.
- November 27: Police arrest Yusuf Jama in Birmingham.
- December 12: Muzzaker Shah is arrested in Newport, Gwent.
- Between Christmas and New Year Mustaf Jamma is thought to flee the country to his native Somalia.
- January 2006: Hundreds of police officers line the streets of Bradford as Pc Beshenivsky's funeral cortege moves through the city towards the funeral service at Bradford Cathedral, passing the spot where she was gunned down.
- October 2006: A trial starts for five of the group. Shah pleads guilty to murder before the jury is sworn in.
- December 2006: Yusuf Abdillh Jama is found guilty of murder. Brothers Hassan Razzaq and Faisal Razzaq are cleared of murder but found guilty of manslaughter by a majority of 10-1.
Raza Ul-Haq Aslam is cleared of both murder and manslaughter. The jury failed to reach a verdict in relation to the robbery charge faced by him.
- December 20: Newspapers report that Mustaf Jama fled Britain, passing through Heathrow Airport disguised as his sister wearing a veil.
- December 22: Shah and Yusuf Jama are sentenced to life and ordered to serve at least 35 years in jail. Shah makes defiant gangster rap-style hand gestures to relatives as he is led out of the dock.
Faisal Razzaq is given a life sentence and told he will serve a minimum of 11 years.
- March 2007: Hassan Razzaq is jailed for 20 years.
- May 2007: Raza al ul Haq Aslam, who acted as a look-out during the raid, is jailed for eight years after being convicted of robbery during a retrial.
- June 2007: Shah receives an additional nine-year sentence, to run concurrent to his life sentence, for firearms offences committed during a car chase in 2004. Faisal Razzaq receives seven-and-a-half years, to run concurrently to his life term, for possession of firearms in 2004.
- November 2007: Mustaf Jama is arrested and extradited to the UK from Somalia.
- March 2008: Yusuf Jama and Shah are sentenced to four years in prison, concurrent with their minimum 35-year life sentences, for stabbing a fellow prisoner at the high-security Frankland Prison in County Durham.
- January 2009: A jury is unable to reach a verdict in the murder trial of Mustaf Jama.
- May 2009: Gordon Brown, then Prime Minister, unveils a memorial to Pc Beshenivsky at the place where she was shot.
- July 2009: Mustaf Jama is jailed for life with a minimum term of 35 years after being convicted of murder and firearms offences during a retrial at Newcastle Crown Court.
- November 2009: A poster offering a £20,000 reward is released in Pakistan by police trying to trace Piran Ditta Khan on the fourth anniversary of Pc Beshenivsky's death.
- January 2020: Khan is arrested in Pakistan and appears in an Islamabad court, where his extradition is discussed. At a second hearing, he asks to be tried in his home country.
- April 2023: Khan is extradited from Pakistan and taken into custody at a West Yorkshire police station where he is charged with murder, robbery, two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and two counts of possession of a prohibited weapon. He appears at Westminster Magistrates' Court on April 13.
- October 2023: Khan pleads guilty to robbery at Leeds Crown Court. He denies murder, two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and two counts of possession of a prohibited weapon.
- February 2024: Khan goes on trial at Leeds Crown Court.
- April 4 2024: Khan is convicted of murder and firearms offences.
And later that he'd died of "natural causes".
Khan went under multiple aliases and at one stage registered a grave in his home village in Pakistan online.
Mr Brennan said he had promised PC Beshenivsky's family he "would leave no stone unturned" and that he and colleagues were suspicious of the intelligence received.
"We had no confirmation, so we carried on trying to track him down," he told The Mirror.
He added seeing Khan convicted is "the final piece in the jigsaw".
In the weeks after the fatal raid, Khan had moved ahead with plans to open a takeaway in Aberdeen, Scotland, but as other gang members began to be arrested he fled to Pakistan.
He lived a millionaire lifestyle in the "Mayfair of Islamabad".
Khan was finally arrested by officers from the British National Crime Agency and Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency as he road a motorbike to property viewing near his home in Bahria Town.
Wanted posters had appeared near his home village offering a £20,000 reward.
"He had bought a nice home in the area and bought several cars. This is where the very rich live so he had an exclusive lifestyle."
Source
A source told The Mirror: "It is believed he moved to Islamabad because he felt he was able to disappear - but this proved increasingly difficult as his property business was doing reasonably well.
"He had bought a nice home in the area and bought several cars. This is where the very rich live so he had an exclusive lifestyle."
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Khan later tried to fight extradition and arrived at court surrounded by armed guards, telling reporters outside: "I've got nothing to do with the killing."
At the time, PC Beshenivsky was only the second policewoman to be killed on duty in the UK.
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