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A schoolgirl allegedly murdered by her father, stepmother and uncle had more than 70 injuries including a “gaping puncture wound” to her head, a UK court has been told.
Sara Sharif, 10, was found dead by police on a bunk bed at her home in Woking, Surrey, covered in bite marks, burns, bruises and dozens of fractures.
The Old Bailey previously heard that before she was killed on August 8 last year, Sara was beaten with a cricket bat, burnt with an iron, and had a plastic bag placed over her head as a “homemade hood”.
Her father, Urfan Sharif, 42, her stepmother, Beinash Batool, 30, and her uncle, Faisal Malik, 28, all deny her murder.
Cary said that Sara had a “gaping” puncture wound to her head and there was “intense purplish bruising” across her chest.
The schoolgirl also had dozens of bruises and abrasions across her body, including on her forehead, her lungs, her cheek and her stomach, he added, and bruises on her belly suggested she had been struck with an “elongated object”.
Sara Sharif was found dead in bed at her family home in Woking, southern England, on August 10 last year. Photo / AP
Cricket bat bore traces of blood
Surrey Police officers who searched the family home where Sara’s body was found, previously said that items including a belt, a cricket bat, and a rolling pin all bore traces of her blood.
On her buttocks, she had a number of burn marks which the jury has been told were caused by an iron “deliberately” being applied to the skin.
Cary also confirmed there were “probable bite marks”. No natural diseases or drugs had contributed to Sara’s death.
An examination of Sara’s brain found “features of traumatic injury of a few days’ duration” before her death, the pathologist also told the court.
Reading his conclusions, Cary gave Sara’s cause of death as “complications arising from multiple injuries and neglect” and described it as “unnatural”.
He said the findings were in keeping with “significant and repetitive blunt force trauma”, and did not exclude the possibility of Sara’s burns contributing to her death through sepsis.
The court has previously heard that before she died Sara was subjected to a “campaign of abuse”.
In the final months of her life, the bruising on her face was so noticeable she was forced to wear a hijab to school to hide her injuries.
Sara Sharif began to wear a hijab to school in the last part of her life. The prosecution have said no other women in her family wore the hijab and the garment was intended to conceal injuries. Photo / Surrey Police
Teachers noticed bruises on her face but after they did so, in the April before she was killed, Sara was taken out of school to be homeschooled.
Two days before she died, a neighbour told police she heard a “single high-pitched scream” coming from the family home on Hammond Rd.
Opening the trial earlier this week, William Emlyn Jones KC, prosecuting, told the jurors that “at the heart of this case lies a simple depressing truth”.
“A 10-year-old girl was found dead in her home,” he said. “Examination of her body shows that she had been subjected to repeated serious violence over a significant period of time.”
He said it was “inconceivable” that just one of the three defendants could have carried out the abuse without the “complicity, participation and encouragement” of the others.
Urfan Sharif. Photo / Surrey Police
Father claimed Sara was ‘naughty’
After Sara was killed, Sharif, Batool and Malik fled to Pakistan with her five siblings, and did not return until over a month later.
On August 10, Sharif contacted police in the UK from Pakistan, and told them to go to his house as he had “legally punished his daughter and she had died”.
In the recording of the 999 call, which has been played to jurors, Sharif said Sara had been “naughty” over the last three to four weeks and he was “giving her punishment” to “sort her out”.
Sharif now claims he only made the confession to protect his wife.
The three defendants are also charged with causing or allowing the death of a child, which they deny.
