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“She was beautiful, an angel, lovely, bubbly,” a weeping Urfan Sharif told the Old Bailey as he recounted his daughter Sara Sharif’s love of eating chicken biryani and playing guitar.
Yet just days later, he would take full responsibility for her traumatic death, admitting to a campaign of abuse that had seen the 10-year-old suffer more than 25 fractures, bite marks, a traumatic brain injury and a burn caused by a hot iron.
Over the course of his trial, horrifying details emerged of the brutality inflicted upon the “happy” and “sassy” schoolgirl, whose father told police officers that he had “legally punished” her after she was naughty.
Phoning their non-emergency 101 line after fleeing to Pakistan on 10 August last year, Sharif told Surrey Police that he was a “cruel father” who hadn’t intended to kill his daughter but had lost his temper.
Yet it quickly emerged that she had been repeatedly attacked in the months before she was killed. Trapped in the family home in Woking, she was the victim of repeated beatings and scaldings, forced to leave school and carry out laundry chores for her stepmother while wearing a hijab to obscure her growing number of bruises and wounds.
Despite the concerns of neighbours who overheard screaming and crying, and the questions raised by her primary school teachers as to the reason behind her injuries, social services were unaware of the full scale of the brutality the young girl was facing.
Both her father and stepmother have now been found guilty of her murder, while her uncle Faisal Malik has been convicted of causing or allowing her death.
Born in 2013 to Sharif and his former wife Olga, Sara’s short life had not been easy. The couple, who had met online in 2009 shortly before Sharif’s visa was due to expire, soon accused one another of abuse and acrimoniously split in 2014, with Sara sent into foster care.
After Olga made allegations of domestic abuse against Sharif, Sara was placed back in her mother’s care while her father was ordered to carry out a domestic violence perpetrator programme by Guildford family courts in 2016.
A course assessment, where he only attended 10 out of 16 sessions, found that he was “very manipulative” and was unable to listen, show empathy or explore past behaviours.
Under cross-examination, he denied allegations that he swore and hit Sara’s mother and claimed he was the victim. He repeatedly refuted the suggestion he was the common denominator, given that three of his previous partners had accused him of locking them in rooms and hiding their passports.
Despite the concerns of social services given Sharif’s history of alleged domestic violence, he was awarded custody of Sara in 2019 after the young girl made allegations of abuse against her mother.
Instead of providing his young daughter with a safe haven after years of being passed from home to home, she was met with abuse and degradation while his new wife Beinash Batool stood by and watched.
As early as May 2021, when she was just seven years old, Batool had messaged her sister: “Urfan beat the crap out of Sara. She’s covered in bruises, literally beaten black.
“I feel really sorry for Sara, poor girl can’t walk. I really want to report him.”
Given that Sharif left his phone in Pakistan and failed to provide details to access his Google Drive, Batool’s distressing updates to her sisters are one of the key pieces of evidence which linked Sara’s injuries to his violent outbursts.
Other messages in February 2022 heard that Sara had begun vomiting when she ate, was suffering from anxiety and that Sharif was beating her as she was being “naughty”.
In another message, she wrote: “[If] something happens to Sara I will not be able to forgive myself.”
Despite this, Batool never reported her husband to social services and helped cover up Sara’s bruises by keeping her out of school, with the abuse inflicted upon the young girl only escalating.
While the family lived in a cramped flat in West Byfleet, neighbours reported hearing constant screaming and crying, with Batool overheard losing her temper and the sound of locked doors rattling.
During her time living above the couple from November 2022 until April 2023, Chloe Redwin told jurors she frequently heard an adult female voice shouting “Shut the f*** up”, “Shut the f*** up you bastard” and “Shut the f*** up, you c***”, while a young girl could be heard screaming.
On one occasion, another neighbour had approached their flat after the distressing sounds had reached “fever pitch”, only for Batool to slam the door in her face.
After they moved to a semi-detached council house in Woking along with Sharif’s brother Faisal Malik, their new neighbour Judith Lozeron noticed that Sara was never seen smiling, and was told she was being homeschooled due to being bullied for wearing a hijab.
Despite Batool’s claims that her decision to wear a headscarf in January 2023 had been due to the girl’s interest in Islam, the prosecution told jurors it was indicative of the need to conceal her injuries.
Her primary school had recorded that Sara had a bruise under her left eye in June 2022 and then in March 2023, a bruise on her chin and a dark mark on her right eye. She gave conflicting accounts of how she had sustained her injuries, and the school contacted Children’s Single Point of Access for advice, and it was agreed that a referral to social services was needed.
Yet after the Easter holidays, she failed to return to join her classmates and was kept at home, at the constant mercy of her controlling father.
Four months later, she was found dead in her bunk bed in an empty house, with a handwritten note next to her body reading: “It’s me Urfan Sharif who killed my daughter by beating.
“I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost it. I am running away because I am scared.”
A post-mortem examination revealed the horrific nature of her death. Sara had endured 71 recent injuries, which included bleeding on her brain, multiple bruises on her lungs, a rare broken hyoid bone in her neck, and a large area of ulceration across her buttocks from an iron burn.
Human bite marks were present across her body, with the evidence indicating that she had been hooded, beaten and restrained while scalding water had been poured over her ankles.
In a shocking admission to the court which left jurors open-mouthed, Sharif admitted to throttling her with his bare hands and battering her with a cricket bat, metal pole and mobile phone, even whacking her in the stomach as she lay dying.
After six days of claiming that his wife was to blame, accusing her of “psycho” behaviour, the taxi driver confessed he had beaten her as he was angry at her for vomiting and soiling herself.
Her dirty clothes were found outside, while the brown packing tape used to restrain her was found in the bins outside as the three defendants sought to cover their tracks. Traces of her blood were found on the kitchen floor, a vacuum cleaner and the cricket bat following a police search, while the Marks and Spencer belt was found in an outbuilding.
Within two hours of her death, the trio had booked flights to Islamabad for the following day, with Batool heard calmly organising the details over the phone with a travel agency.
Upon arriving in Islamabad in the early hours, Sharif alerted the police to his actions and sparked an international manhunt, but failed to return to the UK until over a month later when Pakistani authorities began arresting his wider family to assert pressure.
“When you left for Pakistan you had no plan to come back. Your plan was to go away so you could get away with what you had done,” the prosecutor accused Sharif, after he claimed he had returned voluntarily.
However, his credibility was shredded and jurors convicted both him and Batool of murdering the schoolgirl, while his brother was convicted of causing or allowing her death.
Mr Justice Cavanagh adjourned sentencing until next Tuesday, telling jurors the case had been “extremely stressful and traumatic”.
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