The father and stepmother of a 10-year-old British-Pakistani girl on Wednesday were found guilty of her murder in a gruesome case of child abuse that shocked the UK and triggered an international manhunt.
Urfan Sharif, 42, and Beinash Batool, 30, were convicted of Sara Sharif’s murder after she was found dead at her home last year, having suffered extensive injuries including broken bones, burns and bite marks.
Her uncle Faisal Malik, 29, was also found guilty of causing or allowing her death after a week of jury deliberations at London’s Old Bailey criminal court. The three will be sentenced on Tuesday after the 10-week trial.
The “brutal abuse and unspeakable violence” inflicted on Sara had “shocked and horrified” people far and wide, said Craig Emmerson of Surrey police who led the investigation into her murder.
Sara was found dead in her bed in Woking, southwest of London, on August 10, 2023. The three convicted family members had fled to Pakistan the day before.
Her father left behind a handwritten note by her body saying he hadn’t meant to kill her “but I lost it”.
Her three relatives were arrested after returning to the UK a month later.
When cross-examined at the highly charged trial last month, Sharif, a taxi driver, admitted to killing his daughter, but maintained he had not meant to harm her. He had initially denied all charges and blamed Batool for Sara’s death.
Sharif also admitted causing multiple fractures in the weeks before Sara’s death, beating her with a cricket bat as she was bound with packaging tape, throttling her with his bare hands and breaking the hyoid bone in her neck.
Batool, who did not give evidence, had refused to provide dental imprints for the bite marks found on Sara, who was described as “bubbly” and “very smiley”.
A post-mortem found the child had suffered at least 25 broken bones. She had suffered more than 100 injuries, including a traumatic brain injury, and had iron burns on her buttocks and boiling water burns on her feet, police said.
A cricket bat with Sara’s blood on it and plastic bag hoods the size of her head were among the evidence found in a house-search.
‘Distressing’
On arriving in Islamabad after fleeing last year, Sharif phoned British police and told them he had beaten his daughter “too much”.
Speaking outside the Old Bailey, Emmerson said the investigation had been “one of the most difficult and distressing cases that Surrey police has ever dealt with”.
“All three defendants have only ever sought to preserve their own interests throughout this investigation and have shown no remorse for their truly dreadful behaviour,” Emmerson added.
The trial also raised questions about Sara’s safeguarding at school and by local child services.
Sharif had gained custody of Sara in 2019 after separating from his first wife, despite allegations of being abusive towards his ex-wife, the jury was told during the trial. Sara was also in and out of foster care.
Around March 2023, after seeing injuries on her face, Sara’s school referred the case to child services, who probed the incident but did not take any action.
A month later, Sara was taken out of school by Sharif to be home-schooled full-time.
“None of us can imagine how appalling and brutal Sara’s treatment was in the last few weeks of her short life,” Libby Clark from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said after the conviction.
Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza said Sara’s death highlighted “profound weaknesses in our child protection system”.
Her case is the latest in a string of child cruelty cases that have triggered public revulsion alongside repeated pledges from authorities to “learn lessons” and prevent further tragedies.
“There can be no doubt that Sara was failed in the starkest terms by the safety net of services around her,” de Souza said.
“Even before she was born, she was known to social care -– and yet she fell off their radar so entirely that by the time she died, she was invisible to them all.
“We can have no more reviews, no more strategies, no more debate. When we say ‘never again’, we have to mean it –- let that be Sara’s legacy.”
Sara’s teacher Jacquie Chambers described her to the BBC as an “absolute chatterbox” and a “confident, very smiley, full of energy and life little girl”.
“She was a really vibrant, big character,” Chambers added.
