Innocent ten-year-old Sara Sharif was brutally beaten to death last year by her father, taxi driver Urfan Sharif, who was today convicted of murder alongside his wife after a month-long international manhunt to track down the cruel pair.
Sara’s stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, wept in the dock as she was convicted but Sharif, 42, showed no emotion. His brother Faisal Malik, 29, was also convicted of causing or allowing her death.
The young ‘chatterbox’ of a child suffered an unimaginable ordeal at the hands of the despicable pair, who bound her and put a plastic bag over her head bound with tape while they battered her with a cricket bat, metal pole and a rolling pin, strangled her until her neck broke, burnt her with an iron and bit her.
When police found her broken little body dumped under the pink covers of her bunk bed by her fleeing family there were so many injuries- at least 71 externally and 29 fractures – that it was impossible to say which wound caused her death.
After her death, Sharif and Batool calmly made plans to flee and were hidden by relatives. They called up a travel agent just an hour later to book flights to Pakistan after jet washing her bloodied body, hiding the wounds in fresh clothes and arranging Sara’s body in bed to look as if she was sleeping.
Only when he had landed in a country with no extradition treaty did Sharif call 999 from Pakistan to say: ‘It wasn’t my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much.’
For almost a month, police searched for Sharif, Batool, Malik and Sara’s siblings – with multiple teams scouring Pakistan.
Police suspected Rasikh Munir, who is a relative of Sharif, of hiding him, Batool and Malik but they didn’t find them despite multiple raids on his property – because they hid in the field behind it.
The children were later discovered at Sharif’s father’s home. After this, Sharif, Batool and Malik decided to fly back to England, where they were finally arrested on September 13 last year.
They were finally convicted following a two month trial, in which the abusive father blamed everyone but himself, drawing gasps of horror from jurors when he claimed it ‘must have been kids’ who held Sara down and burnt her.
Sara Sharif, 10, was found dead with at least 71 injuries including beating and burn marks
Sara was beaten to death by her abusive father in August last year 9
Rasikh Munir, who is a relative of Sharif, hid him, Batool and Malik and they fled into the nearby cornfields to hide from police when the house (pictured) was searched
Munir told the BBC he had believed Sharif was innocent and decided to hide the family in order to protect the children who he thought were ‘helpless’.
He lives on the outskirts of Sialkot – an industrial district in Punjab – which is surrounded by rice fields and corn crops. It cuts a harrowing silhouette, with barbed wire and CCTV at the gate.
The police never found them at his home because they had fled and hid in cornfields during the night-time raids, he revealed.
He also said he had driven them around for mundane activities that you would never expect to find international fugitives doing.
These included buying ice cream and pizza, and bringing the family to the hairdresser as the manhunt was ongoing. He also drove them to the city of Jhelum, two hours away, where Sara’s grandfather lived.
Sharif, Batool and Malik would also hide in a neighbour’s home just metres away when journalists visited to interview Munir.
Munir said the family would sit in his home and debate the manner in which they should talk to the British police.
Sharif slept separately to Batool and the children, who shared a room with some sleeping in the bed and some on mattresses laid on the floor.
The cornfields were Munir said the family would hide in the dark during police raids
Police tracked the fugitives down to this house in Jhelum, Pakistan, where Sara’s grandfather lived. But when they found her siblings, the three adults were hiding next door
Urfan Sharif, 42, was emotionless as he was found guilty of murdering his daughter
Sara’s stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, wept as she was found guilty of murdering the girl
Sara’s uncle Faisal Malik, 29, was found guilty of causing or allowing the death of a child
Pakistani interrogated dozens of Sharif’s family members (Pictured: Urfan Sharif’s father, Muhammad Sharif)
From his flat roof, he said the family could see if the police were coming ‘from all sides’ with a clear view to the road.
When the cops were spotted, Sharif, Batool and Malik would flee into the cornfield by the house – along with the children – and crouch, hidden, in the humid conditions in the dead of night.
Their few belongings were stashed in Munir’s car, ‘parked in a safe place’. He said police never searched the field.
He told the BBC: ‘The younger ones didn’t know what was happening. They were scared, they couldn’t understand.’
He remembered little Sara as being a ‘very nice girl’ when she had last visited his home.
Just over three weeks into the search, police found Sara’s siblings at their grandfather’s home in Jhelum, but not Sharif or Batool.
Grandfather Muhammad Sharif told the BBC that – incredibly – the wanted adults were hiding in the house next door, just a few metres away.
Cameras were attached to an LCD screen so the family could see when the police were coming and they ‘ran away’ the night that the children were found.
Police reports said that as they recovered the youngsters, officers looked out of the window only to watch on helplessly as ‘the adults sped away’, presumably in a car.
On September 6, Sharif and Batool released a two minute and 36 second video claiming they are in hiding as they fear the Pakistan police will torture and kill them
Sara’s uncle Faisal Malik is arrested by police officers on suspicion of her murder – he lived with Sara and her family in Woking
Bodycam footage shows Sara’s stepmother, Beinash Batool, 30, and her husband Urfan Sharif, 42, being removed from their first-class seats by police to be arrested for Sara’s murder
Sara suffered broken bones from being hit with a cricket bat, pictured above in evidence
A Surrey Police photo of a white pole shown in court as evidence during the murder trial
Sara Sharif died aged ten at the family home in Woking, Surrey, on August 8 last year
Munir said the adults called him and he went to pick them up, but the next day realised they couldn’t keep running and decided to tell a British lawyer and Surrey Police that they would return.
Despite knowing that police wanted to speak to Sharif, Batool and Malik after little Sara was found dead with brutal injuries, he still hid them.
Munir said: ‘Whoever has done this to Sara should be punished because they have done a great injustice.’
Sharif, Batool and Malik went to the airport and flew home voluntarily, not appearing to have any contact with Pakistani police themselves.
But some believe a deal was struck where the suspects were told in no uncertain terms to go back to Britain or there would be continued pressure applied against their relatives.
The shocking case has raised questions about failures by police, social services and Sara’s school who missed 15 opportunities to save the vulnerable pupil before Sharif savagely battered her to death with a metal pole as she lay barely conscious dying in Batool’s arms on August 8 last year.
An independent safeguarding review has been ordered into her murder which will examine the circumstances in which a family court judge decided to place the victim in the custody of her cruel father and stepmother in a fateful decision that ultimately would cost her life.
Now after her father’s conviction, it can be revealed that he had been accused of attacking three women and two children including a one-month-old baby, who suffered a similar catalogue of bruises, burns and bites, but he was never charged with any offence.
After arriving in the UK on a student visa, the taxi driver preyed on vulnerable women as young as 17 whom he attempted to wed in a bid to get a UK passport.
Sara was failed by authorities after a decade of missed opportunities to stop her violent father
Flowers and notes left outside the family home in Woking, pictured on August 11 last year
CCTV image dated August 9, 2023 issued by Surrey Police of Sara Sharif’s family going through passport control at Heathrow Airport in London
Sara Sharif as a toddler. There was evidence she had been bound with packaging tape and hooded during the assaults, which would have left her in excruciating pain, jurors heard
He held one woman at knifepoint, choked another with a belt and imprisoned one girlfriend for five days while he sent her passport off for a marriage application in a bid to secure residency in the UK.
In a sickening twist, Sharif managed to escape justice for so long by claiming he was the real victim, grooming children to cover for him including a teenager who was due to testify that he was innocent before Sharif’s dramatic confession to Sara’s killing midway through the trial.
Sharif’s family shielded him in Pakistan after the killing, lying about seeing Sara on video happily having dinner with her family on the night she died.
Police in Pakistan controversially brought false charges against Sharif’s family to force him to return to the UK.
On the stand, Sharif finally cracked under cross-examination admitting that he had regularly beaten Sara with a cricket bat for ‘no reason’ and killed her by hitting her with a metal pole.
Letters found after Sara’s death revealed her desperation to win over her tyrannical father, as she wrote, ‘I am sorry that I was rude. Please forgive me, I am so, so sorry.’
Sara wrote that Batool was the ‘best, caring and loving mother in the world’ and said of her father ‘I love you so much. Our family is the best in town, we spread love around the world.’
Sara’s grandmother Sylwia Kurz said of Sharif and Batool: ‘There are not people; these are beasts.
‘I can’t understand how much Sara went through, how much pain she had to go through. She must have suffered so much. How is it possible to be such a degenerate?’
Ms Kurz did not attend the trial as the evidence was too painful to listen to.
Sara’s headteacher said she experienced ‘daily living hell’ at home at the hands of her father and stepmother, but at school she was a caring, cheerful ‘chatterbox’, who loved singing and dancing.
The note left by Sara’s cruel father before he fled the country
A photo from Surrey Police of a room inside the family house in Woking, Surrey
Sara’s mother Olga (pictured) met Sharif in Poland before he convinced her to move to Woking
Police officer Imran Hussain (pictured) was given a vital tip-off over where Urfan Sharif, Beinash Batool and Faisal Malik were hiding
A Surrey Police spokesman said: ‘We will continue to work with our partner agencies, Surrey County Council and the NHS Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care Board, under the Surrey Safeguarding Children Partnership, to progress the review into the circumstances of Sara’s death.
‘The review will scrutinise decisions and actions taken by the agencies involved and as such, we are unable to provide any further comment which might pre-empt the outcome of that review.
No child should ever have to endure the brutal mistreatment, the appalling injuries and the extreme abuse that Sara was subjected to.
‘We remain committed to working with our partner agencies to identify the lessons to be learned from this case and ensure these are swiftly acted upon.’
Judith Reed, from the Crown Prosecution Service, said that although justice has been secured for Sara, the ‘ultimate tragedy is that she was killed by the very adults who should have loved and protected her’.
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