A coroner has ruled that Piran Ditta Khan, the gang leader convicted of murdering West Yorkshire PC Sharon Beshenivsky, died of natural causes in prison less than a year into his 40-year sentence. Khan, 76, had evaded justice for 15 years by fleeing to his native Pakistan after the 2005 killing, before being arrested in 2020 and extradited to the UK in 2023. His death closes a long-running case that saw all seven men involved in the fatal 2005 robbery eventually convicted, with Khan the last to face trial.

Assistant coroner Naomi McLoughlin recorded Khan's cause of death as bronchial pneumonia linked to multiple strokes and lung cancer; he was being treated for stage-four cancer and died at HMP Wakefield on 21 February 2025 after being returned from hospital for palliative care. PC Beshenivsky, a mother-of-three who had been in the job just nine months, was shot dead alongside an unarmed colleague while responding to an armed robbery at a Bradford travel agents on her daughter's fourth birthday in November 2005. Khan was convicted in April 2024 and jailed for life with a 40-year minimum term the following month, having maintained he was guilty only of the robbery, not the murder.