Father of 10-year-old Sara Sharif told police he had killed her, court hears | UK news

The daddy of the 10-year-old schoolgirl Sara Sharif killed her earlier than fleeing to Pakistan and calling police to say he “beat her up an excessive amount of” as a punishment for being naughty, a court docket has heard.

Sara’s physique was found on the household dwelling in Woking, Surrey, on 10 August final 12 months alongside a handwritten observe from her father, saying: “I swear to God that my intention was to not kill her. However I misplaced it.”

Sara’s father, Urfan Sharif, 42, her stepmother, Beinash Batool, 30, and her uncle Faisal Malik, 28, are accused of killing her on 8 August. The defendants, who lived collectively, are mentioned to have carried out “a marketing campaign of abuse”, with Sara being subjected to “repeated critical violence over a major time period”.

Opening the case on the Previous Bailey on Monday, the prosecutor, William Emlyn Jones KC, mentioned the postmortem examination of Sara’s physique revealed a “horrible reality”.

He mentioned: “When Urfan Sharif mentioned in that decision: ‘I beat her up,’ he got here nowhere close to to describing the extent of the violence and bodily abuse that Sara had suffered, not simply on the time of her demise however repeatedly, over time. She had been the sufferer of significant violent assault and bodily abuse for weeks and weeks, not less than.

“The medical doctors discovered dozens of separate accidents, externally and internally, once they examined Sara’s physique. They discovered she had suffered in depth bruising, burns, damaged bones, outdated and new. So no, Sara had not simply been crushed up.

“Her remedy, definitely in the previous couple of weeks of her life, had been appalling, it had been brutal. And all through, these three defendants had been the adults dwelling in the home the place Sara had lived, the place she had suffered and the place she had died.”

The court docket heard that the defendants fled to Pakistan on 9 August and Sharif, a taxi driver, referred to as police an hour after touchdown in Islamabad the next day, at 2.47am UK time. A recording of the eight-and-a-half-minute 999 name was performed to jurors, wherein a weeping Sharif instructed the operator: “I legally punished my daughter, and she or he died … I killed my daughter. I killed my daughter.”

Somewhat later, when requested for extra element, Sharif added: “She was naughty during the last three, 4 weeks and I used to be giving her punishment to kind her out. I did one thing and she or he died.”

He mentioned he was a “merciless father” and had fled dwelling in a “panic” however refused to say the place he was.

Police discovered Sara’s physique below a pink sheet on a backside bunk mattress on the household’s clear and tidy dwelling after the 999 name. Subsequent to her physique was a observe saying: “It’s me Urfan Sharif who killed my daughter by beating. I’m operating away as a result of I’m scared.”

A postmortem examination discovered that Sara had “an terrible constellation of accidents”, together with fractures that had been proof of “a number of episodes of blunt drive trauma inflicted over a number of weeks”.

Docs concluded there had been incidents of “handbook strangulation” and “different, maybe much more disturbing” accidents, together with possible human chunk marks to Sara’s arm and interior thigh. The prosecutor mentioned dental information offered by Sharif and Malik indicated they weren’t answerable for the marks, whereas Batool had refused to supply an impression.

The prosecutor mentioned the consultants concluded Sara had been burned by a sizzling iron and had been tied up and restrained, maybe for prolonged intervals. He added that matching accidents to Sara’s ankles prompt “sizzling liquid encountered each ft whereas they had been shut collectively”.

The prosecution alleges it’s “inconceivable” that any of the defendants may have carried out the “marketing campaign of abuse” on their very own and that they’re all answerable for Sara’s demise.

“None of them ever reported Sara’s abuse to any outdoors company, who may have intervened. Sara’s medical information inform us that not one of the accidents she acquired was ever reported or proven to a health care provider, not to mention handled, nor proven to employees at her faculty. No outdoors assist was referred to as,” the prosecutor mentioned.

The court docket additionally heard that Batool made a “calm” name to a journey agent inquiring about flights to Pakistan on the night of 8 August 2023 as Sara lay useless in the home.

The jury was performed a recording of the cellphone name wherein Batool asks about flights to Islamabad for your entire household – other than Sara.

“What’s solely apparent is that simply as no medical assist had ever been looked for Sara in life, so it was that now there appears to have been no query of a name to 999 from the home, to hunt emergency care in her dying moments, nor to report her demise whereas these accountable had been nonetheless on the premises. Their flight to Pakistan was their precedence,” the prosecutor mentioned.

The defendants have pleaded not responsible to homicide and to inflicting or permitting the demise of a kid between 16 December 2022 and 9 August 2023.

The court docket heard that there was “an enormous outdated battle brewing between these defendants” with every looking for to deflect the blame on to 1 or each of the others.

Sharif has claimed that his spouse, Batool, was accountable and that his obvious confession was to guard “the true responsible celebration”. Batool in flip has accused Sharif, describing her husband as “a violent disciplinarian who recurrently assaulted Sara”. Malik has denied accountability, claiming he was “solely and blissfully unaware of any abuse or assault of Sara by anybody at any time”, the prosecutor mentioned.

The trial earlier than the decide Mr Justice Cavanagh is predicted to go on till 13 December.