At first glance, a home video that showed Sara Sharif dancing in front of the TV could have been filmed in any happy household. But on closer inspection it was clear that a small chunk of the little girl’s finger was missing and there was a deep scratch to her nose.
Unseen by the lens were the scores of devastating injuries inflicted on Sara during a years-long campaign of abuse by her father, Urfan Sharif, and stepmother, Beinash Batool.
“It is heartbreaking to watch,” the prosecutor, William Emlyn Jones KC, told jurors at the Old Bailey after they had been shown the footage.
“Beaten black and blue under those clothes, with open burn wounds on her buttocks and ankles, she was still doing her best to have fun, still doing her best to be a child. Moving a little awkwardly, looking rather drawn and hollow-cheeked, but alive at that time, just for a little longer.”
Sara died two days later. The full extent of her injuries was not discovered until she was found neatly tucked into a bunk bed at her family home in Woking, Surrey, on 10 August 2023.
A postmortem found she had 71 external injuries, including bruises, burns, and human bite marks. She also had at least 25 fractures, including to the hyoid bone in her neck and 11 to her spine from being beaten with a cricket bat, metal pole and mobile phone.
Sharif, 43, and Batool, 30, were found guilty of murder on Wednesday after an eight-week trial that laid bare the brutal violence meted out on Sara. Sharif’s brother Faisal Malik, 29, was convicted of causing or allowing the death of a child.
Sara was born on 11 January 2013 and immediately made subject to a child protection plan due to existing concerns about her parents. She was briefly placed into foster care in 2014 and later a refuge after her biological mother, Olga Domin, accused Sharif of domestic abuse. Sara returned to live with her father after a family court ruling in October 2019.
A happy, bubbly and “sometimes sassy” child, she was not afraid to answer back, according to her teachers at St Mary’s primary in West Byfleet. “She could be very spirited and quite bold and fierce with what she wanted to say. She loved to be on stage and singing and performing, that was her kind of happy place,” said Helen Simmons, who taught Sara between the ages of eight and 10.
But Sara’s spark had faded by the time the family moved to a new three-bedroom house in Woking in April 2023, the same month that Sharif and Batool removed her from school to hide her increasing injuries from the outside world.
“Never was she smiling when I saw her, not one time,” said Judith Lozeron, the family’s new nextdoor neighbour. “I was told she was bullied at school for wearing a hijab and she was being home schooled because of that. Every single time I saw her she wore a hijab – she was the only member of the family who wore that.”
Sara had been routinely “brutally mistreated, abused, and violently assaulted” for years but it was in this period that Sharif ramped up his abuse.
His daughter was tied up and beaten with a cricket bat and an improvised metal truncheon made from the leg of a high chair. She was also hooded with a plastic bag that was taped across her head.
Her ankles were bound while hot water was poured on them, leaving symmetrical open sores. Her bottom was burned with an iron, which too left open sores. She was made to wear a nappy so her abuser could keep her restrained during the serial assaults.
Even in death Sara was afforded no dignity. Her battered body was stripped and, it was suggested, possibly jetwashed in the garden as the family prepared to flee to Pakistan. Her soaking-wet leggings and nappy were found entwined in the garden bin, alongside packing tape and the homemade blood-stained hoods.
After attempting to clean up the crime scene, the defendants fled to Pakistan on 9 August from where Sharif called police to say he had beaten Sara up “too much” for being naughty. He had also 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.”
The family got rid of their mobile phones while on the run for more than a month in Pakistan. They returned to the UK on 13 September 2023 and gave no comment during interviews with Surrey police.
But it was difficult to keep up with Sharif’s lies when he gave his account in the witness box in courtroom 5. For six days, he presented himself as a selfless father and husband who worked day and night as a taxi driver to provide for his family.
He claimed he was the victim of baseless accusations. The fact that three former Polish girlfriends had told police the same thing – that he had kept them prisoner and threatened and controlled them – was “a coincidence”, he said.
Sharif called the women liars, and claimed they had in fact threatened and assaulted him. “I’ve never been violent towards anyone,” he told the nine women and three men charged with deciding his fate. “I’ve never been frightening or aggressive towards anyone at all.”
Social services records about his alleged abuse of women and children and his coercive nature were also incorrect or merely opinions, he claimed.
There was also a fair bit of mud-slinging. Sharif repeatedly pointed at Batool in the dock and called her a psycho. He said she was a liar and suggested she had bitten Sara “like an animal” and tied her up. Neither Batool nor Malik gave evidence during the trial.
But Sharif’s own lies unravelled on day seven of his evidence. It began with a fairly innocuous question from Caroline Carberry KC, Batool’s barrister, as he was to be cross-examined for the third day.
In a moment of courtroom drama normally only seen on TV, Sharif quietly replied that he had something to say. “I want to admit that it’s all my fault. I want the court to consider my full note and confession,” he said.
The jury were open-mouthed. Batool began wailing in the dock. The admission even took Sharif’s barrister, Naeem Mian KC, by surprise. “I had absolutely no idea that he was going to do that,” he later told jurors.
Sharif went on to accept that he had repeatedly beaten Sara with a cricket bat and metal pole as a punishment for being naughty, vomiting and soiling herself. He said he had intended to cause her serious harm. He had, in effect, admitted murder.
But after a brief recess for legal advice, Sharif back-pedalled. He said he had struck Sara with a cricket bat but just the once, and he had been trying to discipline her, not hurt her.
Sharif took issue with details in the claims against him. While he admitted beating Sara with a cricket bat after binding her ankles and wrists with packing tape, he was upset by the suggestion he had forced her to do squats. At times he struggled to compose himself, either openly crying or, as Emlyn Jones put it, “sniffing and snorting and looking all cross”.
Sharif also repeatedly denied hooding, biting or burning Sara. When asked how she had suffered a severe burn on her bottom, Sharif suggested another child might have inflicted it. A visibly exasperated Emlyn Jones replied: “How low will you go?”
The prosecutor said Sharif had tried to get away with murder, but it took just two days of deliberation for the jury to see through his lies and find him guilty.
