The father of the 10-year-old schoolgirl Sara Sharif killed her before fleeing to Pakistan and calling police to say he had “beat her up too much” for being “naughty”, a court has heard.
Sara’s body was discovered at the family home in Woking, Surrey, on 10 August last year, alongside a handwritten note from her father, saying: “I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost it.”
Sara’s father, Urfan Sharif, 42, stepmother, Beinash Batool, 30, and uncle, Faisal Malik, 28, are accused of killing her two days earlier on 8 August. The defendants are said to have carried out “a campaign of abuse”, with Sara being subjected to “repeated serious violence over a significant period of time”.
Opening the case at the Old Bailey on Monday, the prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC, said the postmortem examination of Sara’s body revealed a “terrible truth”.
He said: “When Urfan Sharif said in that call: ‘I beat her up’, he came nowhere near to describing the extent of the violence and physical abuse that Sara had suffered; not just at the time of her death, but repeatedly, over time; she had been the victim of serious violent assault and physical abuse for weeks and weeks, at least.
“The doctors found dozens of separate injuries, externally and internally, when they examined Sara’s body. They found she had suffered extensive bruising; burns; broken bones, old and new. So no, Sara, had not just been beaten up.
“Her treatment, certainly in the last few weeks of her life, had been appalling; it had been brutal. And throughout, these three defendants were the adults living in the house where Sara had lived; where she had suffered; and where she had died.”
The court heard the defendants fled to Pakistan on 9 August, and Sharif, a taxi driver, called police an hour after landing in Islamabad the following day, at 2.47am UK time.
A recording of the eight-and-a-half-minute 999 call was played to jurors, in which a weeping Sharif told the operator: “I legally punished my daughter, and she died … I killed my daughter. I killed my daughter.”
A little later, when asked for more detail, Sharif added: “She was naughty over the last three, four weeks and I was giving her punishment to sort her out. I did something and she died.”
He said he was a “cruel father” and fled home in a “panic” but refused to say where he was.
Police found Sara’s body under a pink sheet on a bottom bunk bed at the family home after the 999 call. Next to her body was a note echoing Sharif’s call, saying: “It’s me Urfan Sharif who killed my daughter by beating.” It added: “I’m running away because I am scared.”
The prosecution alleges that it is “inconceivable” that each of the defendants could have carried out the “campaign of abuse” on their own, and that they are all responsible for her death.
“None of them ever reported Sara’s abuse to any outside agency, who could have intervened; Sara’s medical records tell us that none of the injuries she received was ever reported, or shown to a doctor, let alone treated, nor shown to staff at her school; no outside help was called,” the prosecutor said.
The defendants have pleaded not guilty to her murder and to causing or allowing the death of a child between 16 December 2022 and 9 August 2023.
The court heard that there was “a big old conflict brewing between these defendants” with each seeing to deflect the blame on to one or both of the others.
Sharif has claimed that his wife, Batool, was responsible and his apparent confession was to protect “the true guilty party”. Batool in turn has accused Sharif, describing her husband as “a violent disciplinarian, who regularly assaulted Sara”. Malik has denied responsibility and claimed that he was “entirely and blissfully unaware of any abuse or assault of Sara by anyone at any time”, the prosecutor said.
The trial before the judge Mr Justice Cavanagh is expected to go on until 13 December.
