A father accused of murdering his daughter in a “campaign of abuse” told police that he “legally punished her and she died”, a court heard.
Sara Sharif, 10, was discovered lying in her bed at her home in Woking, Surrey, with dozens of injuries including burns, bite marks, broken bones and extensive bruising on Aug 10 last year.
Her father Urfan Sharif, 42, stepmother, Beinash Batool, 30, and uncle, Faisal Malik, 28, appeared for trial at the Old Bailey on Monday accused of her murder.
The court heard that Sara suffered “appalling and brutal” abuse “for weeks and weeks” before her death.
Jurors were told that the schoolgirl appeared to have been restrained by being tied to a heating pipe and burned with an iron.
Opening the case, William Emlyn Jones KC, said it was “inconceivable” that only one of the defendants could have carried out the “campaign of abuse” without the “complicity, participation, assistance and encouragement of others”.
He said that the three accused were all “pointing the finger at each other” and refusing to take responsibility for Sara’s death.
Ms Batool will claim that her husband was a “violent disciplinarian” while Mr Sharif will claim that Sara was primarily looked after by his wife, the court heard.
All three defendants have pleaded not guilty to her murder and to causing or allowing the death of a child between Dec 16 2022 and Aug 9 2023.
The court heard that in the early hours of Aug 10 last year, an eight-and-a-half-minute long phone call was made by Mr Sharif to police in the UK.
The operator initially struggled to hear Mr Sharif, who appeared to be emotional, Mr Emlyn Jones KC, said.
“[They] interrupted and said ‘take a deep breath and tell me what’s happened’. 999 operators are used to hearing all kinds of dreadful things, but this one cannot have expected the answer he got to that question.”
The court heard that Mr Sharif, a taxi driver, told the operator “I’ve killed my daughter” before adding “I legally punished her and she died”.
When pressed for more details, he replied: “She was naughty”, and then “I beat her up, it wasn’t my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much”, the court heard.
In the call, he is heard begging the police to go to his home “because his daughter is alone”.
At the home address on Hammond Road, in an upstairs bedroom, on the bottom bunk, police found Sara “as if asleep”.
“But she was not asleep,” Mr Emlyn Jones said, “She was dead. Her name was Sara Sharif, and she had been just 10 years old when she was killed.”
The court heard that next to her body was a note “in Urfan Sharif’s handwriting”, which read: “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”.
The note also said: “I am running away because I am scared.”
Mr Emlyn Jones said: “It was certainly true that he ran away… In fact the whole family ran, they fled to Pakistan, flying out on August 9 and landing on August 10.”
Mr Sharif had not called the police until he was “thousands of miles away”, the prosecutor added.
Mr Emlyn Jones told the jurors that throughout the trial, they would hear evidence from Sara’s school and neighbours.
He said that Sara had been withdrawn from her school to be home-schooled a few months before she died.
The prosecutor added that evidence from text messages and neighbours would give a “snapshot of what life in that house was like”.
Mr Emlyn Jones said that Mr Sharif’s claim that he “beat up” his daughter “came nowhere near to describing the extent of the violence and the physical abuse Sara suffered”.
He told the court that the schoolgirl had “been the victim of assault and physical abuse for weeks and weeks at least”.
“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.”
He added: “At the heart of this case lies a simple but depressing truth. A 10-year-old girl was found dead in her home; examination of her body shows that she had been subjected to repeated serious violence over a significant period of time.”
Mr Emlyn Jones said all three defendants had been charged with murder because it was “inconceivable” that the others would not have known.
He continued: “It is inconceivable that one of the adults alone, or two of them, could have carried out what amounts to a campaign of abuse without the complicity, participation, assistance and encouragement of the others.
“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 were ever reported, or shown to a doctor, or to staff at her school; no outside help was called.
“None of the defendants did anything to prevent what was happening to Sara, as they surely would have done if they had not been complicit in what was happening. The prosecution case is that they are all responsible for her death, and they are all guilty of her murder.”
The court heard that “all of the defendants accept that Sara had suffered serious and repeated violence within the family home”.
However, Mr Emlyn Jones said: “Each of them denies that they were the one responsible for any of that violence and abuse.
“Each of them seeks to deflect the blame onto one or both of the others, to shift responsibility away from themselves, onto someone else.”
Mr Sharif, the court heard, would seek to claim that he was not responsible for the violence, as he was often out working.
He said Sara was primarily looked after by his wife, Ms Batool.
He claimed that his apparent confessions in the note and the video call were false and that he had only made them to protect his partner.
Ms Batool blamed Sara’s death on Mr Sharif who she described as a “violent disciplinarian” who regularly assaulted his daughter.
She will argue that although she knew what was happening, she was too fearful of her husband to intervene.
Mr Malik claims that he was unaware of any of the abuse being perpetrated against Sara.
Mr Emlyn Jones said the case was bound to generate “strong emotions; distress, disgust, great sadness and doubtless even anger”.
‘Constellation of injuries’
The court heard that a post-mortem found evidence of “an awful constellation of injuries” including, puncture wounds, abrasions and extensive bruising “all over her body”.
The injuries were consistent with “significant and repetitive blunt force trauma” and the use of an “instrument or instruments”.
There was also evidence of a significant head injury inflicted more than 48 hours before her death.
Alongside the wounds to her skin, Sara had fractures in both arms, both hands, both shoulder bones, her fingers, her vertebra and her ribs.
Some of the injuries were at least six weeks old, while some were less than ten days old indicating “multiple episodes of blunt force trauma over several weeks”.
Sara also had fractures in her throat, which the prosecution said implied “manual strangulation” over a prolonged period.
Mr Emlyn Jones said there were “even more disturbing injuries”, adding that Sara “appeared to have been bitten”.
She had five bite marks to her left arm and another on the inner thigh of her left leg.
Both Mr Sharif and Mr Malik provided dental impressions and an odontologist concluded that they did not appear to be responsible for the bite marks.
Ms Batool refused to provide a dental impression, the court heard.
Finally, the pathologist found “horrible, extremely painful” burn injuries on her buttocks, which appeared to have been caused by a “domestic iron applied with pressure”.
Mr Emlyn Jones said there was “no chance the burn injury was an accident”, he added: “Sara would have needed to have been restrained, to have been held down.”
‘Tied up and restrained’
She also had scald burn wounds to her ankles suggesting that she had been “tied up and restrained” by being tied to a heating pipe in the house.
The court heard that following the Easter school holidays in 2023, Mr Sharif had informed Sara’s school by email that she was going to be homeschooled.
On the note left beside his daughter’s body, Sharif also wrote “my daughter is Muslim”, “can you bury her like [a] Muslim may be”.
The court heard that the “clearest evidence” of Sara’s exact time of death came from text messages, sent by one of her five siblings.
At 8:38pm on Aug 8, the sibling, who cannot be named for legal reasons, texted a friend saying: “Hello. Urgent”
In another message, a minute later, they wrote: “My sister has just passed away.”
Less than half an hour later, the court heard, Ms Batool made a phone call to Southall Travel to request flights to Pakistan.
She was unable to pay for the flights, so Mr Sharif called a friend of his, who had helped him book flights in the past, and told him he needed flights for the next day.
He said he needed a one way trip and he sent passport details for all of the family members apart from Sara.
Mr Emlyn Jones said it was “entirely obvious” that “just as no medical help had ever been sought for Sara in life, there was no question of a call to seek emergency care in her dying moments”.
The court heard that they were captured on CCTV arriving at Heathrow at 10:19am on Aug 9.
Mr Sharif left his car in the short stay car park at the airport unlocked, with the key in the ignition.
The three accused did eventually return to the UK but not until over a month later on Sept 13.
The trial, set to last for nine weeks, continues.
