A KILLER has finally been brought to justice after almost 25 years.

Father-of-four Jagtar Singh – known as Tony – was convicted at the High Court in Glasgow yesterday of murdering 38-year-old restaurant manager Ansar Shah, a dad-of-three in the car park at the Armaan Restaurant in Seafield Road, Ayr, on October 4, 1993.

The Judge sentenced Singh to life imprisonment and ordered him to spend at least 17 years behind bars.

One of my Shah's daughters was born a month after his death and never knew her father.

The court heard that a fight broke out involving staff from the restaurant and Singh and his brother Jaspal Singh, 54, from Slough, Berkshire, and their friend Balwant Singh, 59, from Dalmellinton, Ayrshire.

There was bad blood between the two groups because the Armaan workers suspected that Jaspal Singh had reported one of them to immigration authorities.

In evidence Singh claimed he had been stabbed first in the stomach by Mr Shah and said: “It was no revenge. It is my religion if someone attacks you, you attack them.”

Singh brutally stabbed Mr Shah three times. Two of the wounds went through his heart and a third cut into his left lung. Neither of the wounds to the heart was survivable.

Within hours Singh was on a bus to London and was weeks later smuggled into France in the back of a vehicle.

He would still be in France had it not been for detective work and a stroke of luck for the Police Scotland when Singh flew to his native India on holiday via Frankfurt Airport.

The German authorities were contacted by Police Scotland and they detained him as he got off the plane.

On November 28, 2017 he was flown back to Prestwick Airport and arrested once he landed on Scottish soil.

Detective Inspector Mark Henderson, Senior Investigating Officer, said: "Jagtar Singh thought that he had managed to evade justice for almost quarter of a century after carrying out this brutal attack on Ansar Shah in the early hours of the night.

"This cowardly individual did everything he could to try to escape the consequences of his actions. He fled to England the following morning and later set up a new life in France, before being arrested in Germany in November 2017 on a European Arrest Warrant and brought back to Scotland to face justice.

"We hope that after almost twenty five years of anguish and suffering, the Shah family who have always acted with dignity are able to try to take some comfort from the fact that the man responsible is now behind bars"

Singh, who has no previous convictions, showed no emotion as he was led away to begin his sentence.”