Footage of the moment police boarded a plane to arrest the alleged killers of Sara Sharif has been shown to jurors, showing the 10-year-old’s stepmother saying to officers: “I think you’re looking for us.”
The exchange was captured on cameras worn by officers and played in court during their trial.
It shows Beinash Batool, 30, sitting next to Sara’s father, Urfan Sharif, 42, on the plane and waiting for officers to arrive. The footage then shows their arrests by officers shortly afterwards. Sara’s uncle Faisal Malik, 29, was also arrested.
All three are on trial at the Old Bailey for murder and causing or allowing the death of a child.
Sara’s body was found in a bunk bed by Surrey police on 10 August after Sharif called from Pakistan to say he had beaten her “too much” for being “naughty”. He had left a handwritten “confession” near her fully clothed body saying: “I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost it.”
Jurors previously heard she had suffered dozens of injuries, and had been hooded, burned, beaten and bitten during more than two years of abuse, culminating in her death at the family home in Woking, Surrey, on 8 August.
Batool, Sharif and Malik flew to Pakistan the next day.
The arrests came the evening they travelled back to the UK on 13 September, arriving at Gatwick airport on a flight from Dubai. Seven minutes after the plane touched down, the footage shows police arrived to detain them.
At one point, an apparently unruffled Batool hands over her handbag to an officer and tells him that Sharif has a cabin bag onboard the plane.
All three defendants deny the charges. The trial continues.
