Tortured and beaten for years before being killed

Horrifying abuse of Sara Sharif, 10, at hands of parents

- HOLLY EVANS

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.