Sara Sharif assaulted and abused 'for weeks' up to death, court hears

The father of the 10-year-old schoolgirl Sara Sharif killed her before fleeing to Pakistan and calling police to say he "beat her up too much" as a punishment for being naughty, a court has heard.

- Emine Sinmaz

Sara's body was discovered at the family home in Woking, Surrey, on 10 August last year alongside a hand-written note from her father, saying: "I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost 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 2023. The defendants, who lived together, are said to have carried out "a campaign of abuse", with Sara being subjected to "repeated serious violence over a significant period of time".

Opening the case at the Old Bailey yesterday, the prosecutor, William Emlyn Jones KC, said the postmortem examination of Sara's body revealed a "terrible truth".

He said: "When Urfan Sharif said in that call: 'I beat her up,' he came nowhere near to describing the extent of the violence and physical abuse that Sara had suffered, not just at the time of her death but repeatedly, over time. She had been the victim of serious violent assault and physical abuse for weeks and weeks, at least.

"The doctors found dozens of separate injuries, externally and internally, when they examined Sara's body. They found she had suffered extensive bruising, burns, broken bones; old and new. So no, Sara had not just been beaten up.