After 15 years as a fugitive, Piran Ditta Khan was handed a life sentence on Friday for leading an armed robbery that ended with the police officer Sharon Beshenivsky being shot dead. Khan fled the country after the 2005 robbery and lived in Pakistan until the UK government extradited him last year. The 75-year-old pleaded guilty to robbery, but the jury at Leeds crown court found him guilty of murdering PC Beshenivsky, two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life, and two counts of possession of a prohibited weapon. He will serve a minimum of 40 years. In November 2005, Beshenivsky and PC Teresa Milburn responded to the robbery of a family-run Universal Express travel agent in Bradford, West Yorkshire, where the armed robbers shot them at point-blank range. Milburn survived the shooting. Beshenivsky died instantly. Six other men were involved in the robbery. Khan, the leader of the gang, is the last to be convicted after evading justice for 15 years. Pakistani authorities arrested him in 2020 and he was extradited to the UK in 2023. The court heard that although Khan did not shoot PC Beshenivsky – he was a lookout and was eating sandwiches in a car when his accomplices shot the two officers – he played a “pivotal” role in the robbery and was aware that his accomplices were using firearms. Prosecutors said this made him guilty of PC Beshenivsky’s murder “as surely as if he had pulled the trigger himself”. Khan denied he was aware of a robbery taking place or that guns were on the scene. Peter Wright KC, defending, said that, due to Khan’s age, his “final years, in all probability, are to be spent in custody with the forbidding prospect that he will die there”. PC Beshenivsky’s daughter Lydia, who was celebrating her fourth birthday on the day her mother was murdered, said she was “too young and innocent” to understand what happened when her mother didn’t return home that day. She said her mum was “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, Piran Ditta Khan, and your associates that day, you robbed me of a future and precious time with my mum. “Every birthday is a reminder of what happened that day. It has recently been Mother’s Day, and while my friends are celebrating with their mums, I sadly can never do that.” Paul Beshenivsky, PC Beshenivsky’s husband of four years at the time she died, said that telling the children what had happened was “the hardest thing I have ever had to do”. His statement read: “The way we lost Sharon was in the most brutal, callous and futile way. She never came home due to the actions and organisation of one person – Piran Ditta Khan. “If Piran Ditta Khan had never organised the robbery, Sharon would never have been shot dead and she would have come home that day.”