A man accused of murdering Pc Sharon Beshenivsky 18 years ago, on Thursday appeared in court after being extradited from Pakistan.
Piran Ditta Khan, 74, was brought back to Britain on Tuesday charged with the murder in Bradford on November 18, 2005. He is also charged with robbery, two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and two counts of possession of a prohibited weapon.
He appeared in the dock of Westminster Magistrates’ Court in central London wearing a blue and white Nike tracksuit jacket.
A Crown Prosecution Service spokesman said the charges were first authorised in 2006, leading to the issuing of the extradition warrant.
Pc Beshenivsky, who had only been serving with the police for nine months, was fatally wounded when responding to reports of a robbery at a travel agent after an alarm was raised.
She was the seventh serving female officer ever to be killed in the line of duty in Britain at the time.
Joanne Jakymec of 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.”
Pc Beshenivsky, who had three children and two stepchildren, was shot as she responded with colleague Pc Teresa Milburn to the alarm. Her colleague was also shot but survived to give evidence at the trial of other members of the armed gang charged with being involved in the murder.
On the day of her death, the Beshenivsky family were due to hold a birthday party for their youngest daughter Lydia, aged four, at their home near Haworth, West Yorkshire.
The officer had been coming to the end of her shift when she was scrambled to the robbery.
Two men, Muzzaker Imtiaz Shah and Yusuf Abdullah Jama, were jailed for life in 2006 over the shooting. Shah admitted murder but denied firing the shot that 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, from London, was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to life with a minimum of 11 years. A year later his brother Hassan was also convicted of manslaughter and jailed for 20 years.
A fifth man, Mustaf Jama, was extradited from Somalia in 2007 and sentenced to life for murder with a minimum of 35 years.
