Sara Sharif’s father has told a court he takes “full responsibility” for the 10-year-old’s death and admitted striking her across the abdomen with a metal pole as she lay dying.
Urfan Sharif also admitted strangling Sara and beating her with a cricket bat while her ankles and wrists were bound with packing tape in the weeks before she was killed. Sharif told jurors he accepted everything that he had told police in a 999 call and a handwritten confession after his daughter’s death.
During cross-examination by Caroline Carberry KC, the barrister for his wife, Beinash Batool, he was asked: “Did you kill your daughter by beating?” He replied: “Yes, she died because of me.”
He admitted he beat Sara “severely” over a number of weeks because he had been angry the schoolgirl had started soiling herself and vomiting.
Sharif, 42, Batool, 30, and Sharif’s brother Faisal Malik, 29, are on trial accused of carrying out a violent “campaign of abuse” before Sara was found dead in a bunk bed at the family home in Surrey on 10 August 2023.
The defendants allegedly killed Sara on 8 August before fleeing to Pakistan, from where Sharif called police to say he had “beat her up too much”. 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.”
A postmortem examination found Sara had fractures and 71 external injuries, including burns and human bite marks. Sharif had repeatedly denied responsibility for Sara’s death as he gave evidence at the Old Bailey. But as he was to be cross-examined for the third day, he said: “I want to say something.”
He went on to say: “I want to admit that it’s all my fault. I want the court to consider my full note and confession. That I admit what I said in my phone call and my written note, every single word.”
Carberry asked: “In the weeks before she died, she suffered multiple fractures to her body, didn’t she, and it was you who inflicted those injuries, wasn’t it?”
Sharif replied: “Yes ma’am,” but he denied inflicting burns and bite marks and causing bruising to the head and face. When asked by Carberry if it would help to look at a graphic of the injuries, Sharif said: “No. I can’t look at that.”
He admitted to using a cricket bat and a white metal pole to inflict multiple fractures and other visible marks on Sara’s body, but denied knowledge of a neck injury that broke the schoolgirl’s hyoid bone.
Carberry asked him about video shown to jurors in which Sara can be seen dancing two days before she was allegedly killed. She said: “She was walking and dancing and moving around in front of the television and something happened to her after that, and I’m going to suggest to you this is what happened after that, on the night of 6 August: you badly beat your daughter. Do accept that?” He replied: “I accept everything.”
Batool left the dock sobbing and the trial was briefly suspended. When Sharif returned to the witness stand, he accepted that he took full responsibility for Sara’s death and for killing her by beating, and admitted intending to cause Sara serious harm during the beatings.
Carberry continued: “You have pleaded not guilty to the offence of murder. Would you like that charge to be put to you again?” He replied: “Yes ma’am.”
Sharif told jurors he did not accept that he was guilty of an offence of murder, saying he had not intended to kill Sara and that the intention of the beatings was “just discipline”.
He admitted hitting Sara in the face in March 2023 after she was sick at the breakfast table and stopping her from going to school because of her obvious injuries. He admitted home schooling her after one beating in April 2023.
Sharif said he began hitting Sara across the head with a mobile phone three or four weeks before she died. He said he started using the cricket bat and the metal pole two or three weeks before she was killed. He accepted he had tightened his hands around Sara’s neck on more than one occasion but could not remember when.
Sharif admitted beating Sara while her ankles and wrists were bound with brown packing tape. Carberry went on: “You accept beating her with the pole and cricket bat when she couldn’t move her legs or arms?” He replied: “Yes ma’am.”
Sharif later said he did not beat Sara on 6 August but he admitted hitting her as she lay dying two days later.
Carberry suggested that Sharif grabbed the metal pole when he arrived home on 8 August after Batool called him to say something was wrong with Sara.
Carberry said: “You said to Beinash that Sara was just pretending, that she was just acting up, and you took, I suggest, the metal pole that you had taken upstairs and you gave her a couple of whacks with it on her abdomen, didn’t you?”
Sharif agreed but claimed the pole was already upstairs. Carberry said Sharif refused Batool’s pleas to call an ambulance, saying: “It was very clear that Sara was very, very unwell and, as we now know, dying.”
All three defendants have denied murder and causing or allowing the death of a child between 16 December 2022 and 9 August 2023. The trial continues.
