74-year-old Piran Ditta Khan has appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court charged with the murder of Police Constable Sharon Beshenivsky in Bradford in 2005. Khan, who was extradited from Pakistan, was taken into custody at a police station in West Yorkshire and charged with killing the 38-year-old officer 18 years ago.

The defendant is also charged with robbery as well as two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and two counts of possession of a prohibited weapon.

A Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) spokesman said that the charges were authorised in 2006 and led to a warrant for Mr Khan’s extradition.

Chief crown prosecutor for the CPS, Joanne Jakymec, 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.”

Khan appeared in the dock of Westminster Magistrates’ Court in central London on Thursday wearing a blue and white Nike tracksuit jacket.

PC Beshenivsky, who had three children and two stepchildren, was fatally shot as she responded with colleague PC Teresa Millburn to an alarm at a travel agent in Morley Street, Bradford.

PC Millburn was also seriously injured, having been shot in the shoulder.

Widower Paul Beshenivsky told YorkshireLive he would have been happy for the suspected killer to “rot in jail” in Pakistan as police attempted to extradite him.

Six men are already in jail with a 35-year minimum term for her murder.

It took British authorities three years to successfully extradite Khan.

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