The father and stepmother of Sara Sharif, a girl beaten to death near London, are to be sentenced on Tuesday after a shocking trial, both because of the abuse inflicted on the child and because of the missed opportunities which could have save her.
• Also read: United Kingdom: three suspects who fled to Pakistan charged with the murder of a little girl
• Also read: Martyred girl: three people arrested in the United Kingdom
• Also read: Accused of killing 10-year-old daughter: ‘I legally punished her and she died,’ Sara Sharif’s father tells 911
The autopsy of the 10-year-old Anglo-Pakistani girl, out of school four months before her death on August 8, 2023, revealed around a hundred internal and external injuries including head trauma, multiple fractures, bruises and scars, traces of burns, including one from an iron, and human bite marks.
His father, Urfan Sharif, 43, and stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, were found guilty of murder on Wednesday at the Old Bailey court in London. His uncle Faisal Malik, 29, who lived with the couple in Woking (south-west London) was found guilty of “causing or making possible his death”.
The morning after Sara’s death, the trio flew to Pakistan with the five other children, leaving the little girl’s body on a bed.
During the trial, Urfan Sharif, a taxi driver, first accused his wife, then admitted responsibility, while claiming that he did not want to kill Sara.
It was he who informed the English police, explaining by telephone, once he arrived in Pakistan, that he had wanted to “legally punish” his daughter but had “beat her too much”.
After a month on the run, the trio returned to the UK and were arrested on the plane. The five children are still in Pakistan.
“Routine” of violence
Sara’s teacher told the trial of a little girl who arrived in class wearing a hijab in January 2023, the only one in her family to wear one, and who pulled on it to hide marks that she did not want to explain. Noticing traces of blows, the school issued three reports, without result.
By April 2023, the family had moved and Urfan Sharif announced to the school that Sara would now be homeschooled.
At the trial, he admitted to having strangled his daughter several times with his bare hands – to the point of breaking a bone in her neck – to having hit her with a cricket bat while she was tied up, or to hitting her with a cell phone on the head.
These attacks against Sara had “become routine, had been completely trivialized,” prosecutor William Emlyn Jones said at the trial.
Social services knew Urfan Sharif and Olga, Sara’s Polish mother whom he had met online, even before the little girl was born.
The two older children had been returned to their estranged mother from Sharif, before a judge decided to entrust Sara and an older brother to their father in 2019, despite his violent nature.
On the day of her death, while Sara lay limp on her mother-in-law’s lap, Urfan Sharif hit her twice in the stomach with the metal leg of a high chair, accusing her of “pretending.”
Beinash Batool, who looked after the six children during the day, chose to remain silent at the trial, as did Faisal Malik. None expressed remorse.
In the wake of the trial which traumatized the British and made headlines, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said there was a need to strengthen measures to protect home-schooled children in the United Kingdom.
