Father of 10-year-old Sara Sharif told police he had killed her, court hears

The prosecution said Sara’s treatment, ‘certainly in the last few weeks of her life, had been appalling, it had been brutal’. Photograph: Surrey police/AFP/Getty Images

The father of the 10-year-old schoolgirl Sara Sharif killed her before fleeing to Pakistan and calling police to say he “beat her up too much” as a punishment for being naughty, a court has heard.

Sara’s body was discovered at the family home in Woking, Surrey, on 10 August last year alongside a handwritten note from her father, saying: “I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost it.”