Sara Sharif’s father told police ‘I’ve killed my daughter’ after fleeing to Pakistan, court hears

Sara Sharif’s father told police “I’ve killed my daughter”, claiming “I legally punished her, and she died,” after fleeing to Pakistan, a court has heard.

Urfan Sharif dialled 999 in the early hours of 10 August last year, when he and the rest of his family were already thousands of miles away.

Sara Sharif, 10, had suffered dozens of injuries, including bruising, burns and broken bones when her body was found in an upstairs bedroom on a bottom bunk bed in her home in Woking, Surrey.

The Old Bailey heard she had been beaten with objects, strangled, tied up, burnt with an iron and even bitten in the weeks before her death.

In an eight-and-a-half minute phone call played to jurors, minicab driver Sharif, 42, was heard crying before he told the operator: “I’ve killed my daughter”.

He also said: “I legally punished her, and she died,” adding “she was naughty”, and: “I beat her up, it wasn’t my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much”.

Prosecutors say Sara was killed on 8 August, before Sharif and his family spent more than £5,000 to fly to Pakistan the following day, landing on 10 August.

Police later found a note in his handwriting by her body, next to her pillow, which said “Love you Sara” on the first page.

“It’s me Urfan Sharif who killed my daughter by beating. I am running away because I am scared but I promise that I will hand over myself and take punishment,” it said.

“I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her but I lost it. My daughter is Muslim. Can you bury her like Muslim may be. I will be back before you finish the post-mortem.”

But prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC said Sara had been subjected to repeated serious violence over a significant period of time and his claim came “nowhere near to describing the extent of the violence and physical abuse Sara had suffered”.

Sharif is on trial with his wife and Sara’s stepmother, Beinash Batool, 30, and Sara’s uncle, Faisal Malik, 28.

They each deny murder and causing or allowing the death of a child between 16 December 2022 and 9 August 2023 and will blame each other, the court heard.

Read more from Sky News:
Man dies while ‘trying to create social media content’
King to be ‘snubbed by senior Australian politicians’

“At the heart of this case lies a simple but depressing truth. A little girl, a 10-year-old girl, was found dead in her home,” said Mr Emlyn Jones.

“She had been the victim of assault and physical abuse for weeks and weeks, at least,” he said.

“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, living in the house where Sara had suffered and living in the house where Sara died.”

‘Catalogue of dreadful mistreatment’

The prosecutor warned jurors to “take something of a deep breath” before outlining the “catalogue of dreadful mistreatment”.

This included 11 separate fractures to her spine, breaks to both hands and evidence of incidents of manual strangulation over a period of six weeks.

“There are other, perhaps even more disturbing, types of injury,” he said.

“The evidence shows that Sara appears to have been bitten.”

Mr Emlyn Jones said experts found “probable human bite marks” and while both men on trial had been excluded, Batool had refused to provide a dental impression.

Burns to her buttocks are believed to have been caused by a domestic iron, while other injuries indicate she was tied up, the court heard.

Prosecutors say all three played their part in the violence and mistreatment that resulted in Sara’s death and it is “inconceivable” that one of them could have carried out so much abuse without the others knowing.

The jury was told Sharif will claim he made a “false confession” to protect his wife, who will say he was a “violent disciplinarian” who she was afraid of.

Malik, who worked part-time at McDonald’s, is expected to say he was not aware of the abuse.

The trial continues.