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The body of a 10-year-old British-Pakistani girl whose death sparked an international manhunt was found with burn marks believed to have been made by an iron, a prosecutor told a London court on Monday.
Sara Sharif was found dead in bed at her family home in Woking, southern England, on August 10 last year.
The discovery triggered a manhunt in which Interpol and Britain’s Foreign Ministry co-ordinated with authorities in Pakistan.
The day before Sara’s body was found, her father, 42-year-old taxi driver Urfan Sharif, stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, and uncle Faisal Malik, 29, left the UK for Pakistan with Sharif’s five other children.
A post-mortem examination found “signs of traumatic head injury”, apparent scald burns on the inside of her ankles and bite marks – five to her left lower arm and one to her inner thigh – that were “probably human”.
Sara Sharif was found dead in bed at her family home in Woking, southern England, on August 10 last year. Photo / AP
Sara’s stepmother, Batool, had refused to provide a dental impression for comparison with the bite marks, the prosecutor said.
Other injuries were to Sara’s ribs, shoulder blades, fingers and 11 separate fractures to the spine, he said.
The jury was played a recording of a “calm” phone call on the evening of August 8, 2023, in which Batool asks about booking flights to Islamabad.
Sara’s body was found in the family’s empty house after an emergency call, apparently from Pakistan, alerting officers was made by a man identifying himself as the father.
Prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC said Sharif called police at 2.47am on August 10 last year.
Jones played a recording of the call for the jury, telling them that he begins by giving the operator his home address.
“It sounds like he is crying,” Jones said.
“The operator 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. Urfan Sharif told him ‘I’ve killed my daughter’.”
“He used an odd expression, he said: ‘I legally punished her, and she died.’ He added ‘she was naughty’, and then ‘I beat her up, it wasn’t my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much’.”
Urfan Sharif. Photo / Surrey Police
Jones told the jury Sara Sharif “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 said.
Following the call, police attended the family home. Jones told jurors what they found.
“In an upstairs bedroom, on a bottom bunk bed, the police found the body of a little girl lying in bed, under the cover, as if asleep. But she was not asleep. She was dead. Her name was Sara Sharif, and she had been just 10 years old when she was killed.”
A note from her father found next to her body appeared to contain a confession, the prosecutor told jurors.
“Love you Sara,” said the note, which was shown to the jury.
A second page added: “Whoever see this note its me Urfan Sharif who killed my daughter by beating.
“I am running away because I am scared but I promise that I will hand over myself and take punishment.”
Another page read: “I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her but I lost it.”
A handwriting expert who analysed the note concluded it was written by Urfan Sharif.
The three defendants – arrested in September last year after disembarking from a flight from Dubai – all deny murder and causing or allowing the death of a child.
