The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
PC killer jailed for 40 years
Aformer Aberdeen restaurant boss behind the murder of a police officer who was shot dead during an armed robbery has been jailed for at least 40 years.
Piran Ditta Khan, 75, fled the UK after the death of PC Sharon Beshenivsky, 38, but was put on trial two decades later after being extradited from Pakistan.
He planned the raid that killed PC Beshenivsky and severely wounded her colleague PC Teresa Milburn, a jury at Leeds Crown Court was told.
The police pair were gunned down as they responded to the heist at the family-run Universal Express travel agents in Bradford, West Yorkshire, in November 2005.
Khan, who was known to friends and associates in Aberdeen as Peter, had lived in the city from the early 1980s until 1998.
He worked in the Shish Mahal restaurant on Union Street and launched Crown Palace on Justice Mill Lane, which closed in April 1998 after a fire.
The family of PC Beshenivsky, who was killed on her daughter’s fourth birthday, watched from court as the last of seven men responsible for the armed raid that claimed her life was sentenced.
Last month, Khan was found guilty of murdering PC Beshenivsky, as well as two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and two counts of possession of a prohibited weapon.
He pled guilty to robbery. The court heard that although Khan was eating sandwiches in a lookout car when the two officers were shot, he played a “pivotal” role in planning the raid and knew loaded weapons would be used.
Prosecutors said this made him guilty of PC Beshenivsky’s murder “as surely as if he had pulled the trigger himself ”.
Yesterday, Mr Justice Hilliard jailed Khan for life with a minimum term of 40 years.
He said: “PC Sharon Beshenivsky’s courage and commitment to duty that day cost her her life.”
In a victim personal statement read in court, PC Beshenivsky’s daughter Lydia described her mother as “a hero who paid the ultimate sacrifice” and said she was proud of her for “doing the job she loved”.
She said: “There will always be a void in my life – a void that should have been filled with my mum’s presence but as a result of violent, callous actions by you and your associates that day, you robbed me of a future and precious time with my mum.”
Paul Beshenivsky, who had been married to PC Beshenivsky for four years when she died, said telling Lydia and son Paul what happened was “the hardest thing I have ever had to do”.
Khan planned to steal up to £100,000 but only got away with £5,000.