The father, uncle and stepmother of 10-year-old Sara Sharif have been found guilty of brutally torturing the young girl to death before they all fled the UK for Pakistan.
Urfan Sharif, 42, and stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, are now facing life sentences following their conviction at the Old Bailey.
Her uncle, Faisal Malik, 29, was also found guilty of causing or allowing her death. The schoolgirl’s father and stepmother are staring down the barrel of life sentences after being found guilty of torturing the youngster to death.
Minicab driver Urfan Sharif, 42, absconded with his family on August 10 last year, leaving behind the body of Sara. She was discovered dead on a bed in her home in Woking, on 10 August 2023, having been regularly beaten with a cricket bat and metal pole.
Sara was found in the bedroom where they had abandoned her, bearing the marks of at least 71 external injuries. She had ten spinal fractures and further fractures to her right collar bone, both shoulder blades, both arms, both hands, three separate fingers, bones near the wrist in each hand, two ribs and her hyoid bone in the neck.
Plastic bags bound with packaging tape were used to suffocate Sara and she was forced to wear a nappy as she was unable to use the toilet when tied up. She had been burned on her buttocks with an iron and had six bite marks on her body, reports the Mirror.
Sharif, who routinely beat his daughter while her wrists and ankles were bound with packaging tape, was convicted of her murder.
Stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, who left six bite marks on Sara’s body, also denied but was convicted of murder. The couple carried out a “campaign of abuse” to “discipline” Sara and became furious with the schoolgirl when she threw up or soiled herself because of the torture they themselves were inflicting.
She was regularly tied up with brown packaging tape and forced to wear hoods made from carrier bags. If she was “naughty”, Batool would call Urfan home to beat her with a variety of weapons.
She was burned on the buttocks with an iron and forced to wear a nappy instead of going to the toilet when she was trussed up. Nine people were living in the two-bedroomed house and the family were referred to social services when teachers noticed bruises on Sara’s face.
Sara had been fostered as a baby amid abuse allegations but social workers ignored the concerns of the last teachers to see their pupil alive. The schoolgirl died in agony when her sadistic family could no longer cover up her bruises with a hijab and kept her away from neighbours and teachers for “home schooling.”
Surrey Social Services have now launched a major review into the case to understand how they completely failed the murdered schoolgirl.
Urfan originally denied abusing his daughter but dramatically changed his story during the trial and admitted responsibility on his sixth day of evidence, telling the jury “I want to admit it, that it is all my fault.”
In what has been described as a desperate bid to evade full blame, a father who violently struck his daughter with a cricket bat while she was bound and defenceless claimed he never intended to hurt her. The court heard the horrific details of how Sara’s uncle, fast-food worker Faisal Malik, 29, who joined the household in December 2022, was found guilty of either causing or allowing a child’s death.
In the aftermath of Sara’s tragic demise, Urfan, along with Batool and Malik, hastily departed to Pakistan to be with Urfan’s relatives. A note was discovered alongside Sara’s body, left by Urfan, which read: “I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost it.”
Meanwhile, Batool displayed no emotion as she organised their flights to Pakistan.
It was upon reaching Pakistan that Urfan made a distressing call to emergency services, stating: “I’ve killed my daughter. I’ve legally punished her and she died.”
He further confessed: “She was naughty. I beat her up, it wasn’t my intention to kill her but I beat her up too much.”
Both Sharif and Malik cooperated with police by supplying dental samples to demonstrate they were not responsible for bite marks found, however, Batool refused. The father admitted he had been abusing Sara since at least 2021.
After arriving in the UK on a student visa in 2003, his efforts to remain included courting three Polish women, hoping marriage would afford him an EU passport. All three women subsequently reported him for domestic violence, accusing him of assault and coercive containment.
He eventually married the third woman, Sara’s mother Olga, but after meeting Batool in 2015, his first marriage dissolved.
While wed to Olga around 2011, Sharif travelled to Pakistan and entered into an Islamic marriage with his first cousin, although he claimed the union was never consummated. The family home was often overcrowded with various relatives, and neighbours reported hearing a child’s distressed screams from the property.
One neighbour remarked that she had never seen Sara smile when she was occasionally allowed outside. Despite her Muslim heritage, Sara attended St Mary’s Church of England school in Byfleet, where teachers observed bruises on her.
Social services were alerted after Sara provided inconsistent explanations for her injuries, but no action was taken. In the last eight months of her life, Sharif and Batool forced Sara to wear a hijab to conceal the bruises they inflicted.
By April 2023, her injuries led them to withdraw her from school, and she went unmonitored in the final desperate months of her existence. At home, Sara was treated like a servant, burdened with all the household chores, including laundry and taking out the trash, amidst beatings and mistreatment.
Neighbours frequently heard Batool yelling and cursing at Sara as she locked the girl in a bedroom. Prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones, KC, told the jury earlier: “Poor Sara Sharif was brutally mistreated, abused and violently assaulted over a long period. It had been going on for years.”
“Those beatings were intended you may think to punish, to impose discipline, no doubt to vent their furious anger at a little girl.”
“Sara was killed as a result of serial and serious violence.”
The family returned to the UK a month after the body was found and were arrested at Gatwick airport after flying in on business class. Sharif spent his first six days of evidence denying abusing Sara and blaming his ‘psycho wife’ for causing her injuries.
He pointed at his wife and called her an ‘animal’ for abusing and biting his daughter. But on his seventh day in the witness box Sharif dramatically told the court he had something to say before admitting responsibility for Sara’s death.
Jurors wept as Urfan confessed to beating her repeatedly with the cricket bat and metal pole when she was tied up. He said he returned home to find her dying in Batool’s arms and admitted to giving her “a couple of wacks” with a metal pole.
Sharif tearfully confessed to causing her death and intending to cause her really serious harm – but then changed his mind after he was advised he had pleaded guilty to murder. He later claimed he had not intended his daughter any harm when he beat her repeatedly with a cricket bat.
Sharif told the court “I am cruel” but could offer no explanations for the horrendous beatings he meted out to a defenceless ten year old girl. He said: “She was my daughter, I’ve been nasty, I’ve been mean with her, I couldn’t care for her. I didn’t do what a father should have done and I take full responsibility for every single thing that happened to my daughter.”
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Sharif vehemently denied biting or burning Sara, suggesting that perhaps other children had burnt her with an iron. He recounted how Batool would inform him when Sara was “naughty”, and he’d respond by beating her with a metal pole.
After initially branding his wife a “psycho” during six days of testimony, Sharif abruptly changed his stance, proclaiming Batool a ‘good mother’ after all. He acknowledged in court that the jury might find his words untrustworthy.
Messages between Batool and her two sisters revealed years of telling them Urfan was “beating the c-p” out of Sara, but they failed to alert the police. Instead, they advised calming down and resorting to reading the Quran.
One message from Batool stated, “she’s covered in bruises literally beaten black.”
Despite their denials, Urfan and Batool were convicted of murder. Malik also faced conviction for both murder and causing or allowing the death of a child.
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