When Olga Sharif went to identify her 10-year-old daughter, Sara, at the mortuary she could barely recognise the small battered body dressed in Mickey Mouse pyjamas.
“One of her cheeks was swollen and the other side was bruised”, she said in an interview on the Polish television channel TVN. “Even now, when I close my eyes I can see what my baby looked like.”
On Sunday it will be a month since Sara’s father, Urfan Sharif, called 999 and told police they would find his daughter dead in his Surrey home in Horsell, near Woking.
Sara had suffered “multiple and extensive injuries” over a “sustained and extended” period, a pathologist found.
A day earlier, Sharif, a 41-year-old taxi driver, had scrambled tickets and boarded a flight to Pakistan with Sara’s stepmother, Beinash Batool, 29, his five other children, aged between one and 13, and his brother, Faisal Malik, 28. Despite an international hunt to bring them in for questioning, they remain at large.
Sara had been taken out of primary school in April to be homeschooled by her stepmother and was known to social services. Her case is likely to raise questions about what could have been done to prevent her death and a multi-agency rapid review is already under way.
Police in Pakistan are understood to be feeling significant pressure from British authorities to find the fugitives. A new high commissioner, Jane Marriott, started her post in Islamabad in July and is said to be pushing them regularly for results.
Officers in Jhelum, where Urfan Sharif’s relatives live, plan to offer a reward for their whereabouts and to circulate “wanted” posters. Surrey police are also appealing for information to help them piece together a picture of Sara’s life.
Police in Pakistan have already raided 20 properties and are under fire for using “unconstitutional colonial tactics” by detaining Sharif’s two brothers and brother-in-law at an unknown location to try to force their wanted relatives to come out of hiding.
Urfan’s father, Muhammad Sharif, 68, who said he saw his son when he first arrived in Pakistan last month, told the Guardian he now had “no idea” where they were. “It was an accidental death and I appeal Urfan to hand himself in to the police and fight his case. Police are harassing my family, they have arrested my other sons and son-in-law. We are confined in our house and the relatives have abandoned us.”
He added: “I urge Urfan, Batool and Faisal to hand themselves over to the police. We have nothing to do with the crime.”
One neighbour, Muhammad Saleem, said on Friday that Muhammad Sharif was taken by police to an unknown location to see his son Imran. “He was brought by the police to the location where his son is confined”, Saleem told the Guardian. “Police confiscated their two vehicles to restrict their movement.”
Urfan Sharif and Batool appeared in a stilted video released to the media by relatives on Wednesday. Batool was the only one to speak, saying “Sara’s death was an incident” but giving no other comment about her stepdaughter or the circumstances of her death.
She went on to say: “Our family in Pakistan are severely affected by all that is going on. My main concern is that Pakistani police will torture or kill us that is why we have gone into hiding.”
Batool said she was concerned for the children’s safety as there was no food where they were hiding and that the couple were “willing to cooperate with UK authorities and fight our case in court”.
Osama Malik, an international criminal law expert based in Islamabad, said that the police’s plan to issue a reward was a preferable method for tracking them down. “This tactic is certainly better than the unconstitutional colonial tactics the Jhelum police is currently using by detaining Pakistani members of Urfan’s family, who have nothing to do with the incident in the UK.”
Mudassar Khan, a spokesperson for Jhelum police, said: “We deny the allegations made by Beinash Batool in her video. Their first such appearance depicts that they are aware police will hunt them soon.
“There are some obligations for us to act. They should come up but our three police teams are working on it and have made several raids across Jhelum and Mirpur to get them. We are hopeful that we will arrest them soon.”
Reports suggest Sara wanted to become a model and had been seen in recent months wearing a hijab, though other family members were said to dress in western clothes.
One parent at the school Sara attended told the BBC that she was seen with facial injuries the day before she was taken out to be homeschooled. “Just before the Easter holidays she was in school and had cuts and bruises on her face and her neck,” the woman, who gave her name as Jessica, said. “My daughter had asked what had happened and she said she’d fallen off a bike and then kind of walked away. The next day the teacher announced she had left school and she was being homeschooled.”
Sara’s Polish mother, born Olga Domin, met Sharif shortly after he moved to Britain from Jhelum in Pakistan in 2001. They are said to have met working at a Burger King, according to the Sunday Times.
They married in 2009 and had a son, now 13. Sara followed in 2013. When the couple separated in 2015, their two children initially lived with Olga but in 2019 the family court decided that they should live with their father.
Olga still had equal rights to see the children but said that it became increasingly difficult to maintain this over time.
Tim Oliver, leader of Surrey county council, said: “An investigation is under way by Surrey police following the tragic death of 10-year-old Sara Sharif and we are working tirelessly with our safeguarding partners to gain a full understanding of the situation as quickly as possible. This is an incredibly sad situation, and our thoughts and deepest condolences are with everyone affected.”
A spokesperson for Surrey police said: “Our inquiries remain ongoing through Interpol, the National Crime Agency and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.”
