Wajahat Sheikh’s crumpled passport photo is the only picture that was ever circulated

IT is a murder case with more than 500 potential witnesses – but no charges.

And as another anniversary passes next Monday, there is little hope of Wajahat Sheikh’s killer ever being traced.

Twenty-three years ago the culprit delivered a fatal blow on the heaving dancefloor of the Scala nightclub in King’s Cross and escaped into the night. It had been a dropkick assault.

Despite the large numbers inside the historic venue on the corner of Pentonville Road, the best description that anybody could recall was that the killer had “googly eyes” – as described to a coroner’s inquest.

Every May the Tribune publishes a reminder – an appeal – that detectives are duty bound to listen to new leads.

Without them, the Met has already told us that all of their old lines of enquiry have hit brick walls and as cold case investigations go, this one might be described as in the deep freeze.

Nobody is even making a true crime podcast about the case – standard, easy material for all those cheap unsolved murder series.

What we do know is that the 21-year-old, a computing student who also went by the name Junaid, died in hospital less than an hour after being hit on May 19, 2002. Security at the club got involved, some people were quickly removed and maybe the killer left amid the chaos.

Several men were arrested at different times but all of them released with no further action being taken. Nothing stuck.

His parents lived abroad and the Met long since stopped issuing appeals for witnesses on the anniversaries.

The ravers inside the Scala that night are probably now in their 40s or 50s – maybe with kids and mortgages – but most people would remember the night they were in a nightclub and everything stopped because somebody had been murdered.

So here we are once again asking: Do you know who killed Wajahat Sheikh?

A call to detectives is the only way this one will be solved now.

• You can read an in depth article by Richard Osley about the failed murder investigation – and the missed chance to catch a killer – next week on NewJournal+. Free and paid subscriptions available at newjournal.substack.com