A UK court will on Tuesday (today) sentence the father and stepmother of Sarah Sharif, a British-Pakistani girl who died of prolonged and horrific abuse in a case that has shocked the UK.
According to a British news agency report, Sara’s 43-year-old father, Urfan Sharif, and 30-year-old stepmother, Beinash Batool, could be jailed for life for murder after being found guilty last week after a 10-week trial at the Old Bailey. in London.
Sara was just 10 years old when she was found dead in her bed in August 2023, her body covered in bites and bruises, with broken bones and burn marks.
An autopsy revealed he had more than 100 wounds and at least 25 broken bones.
Her father Urfan admitted to beating her with a cricket bat as she was bound with packing tape in the weeks before her death. He also strangled her with his bare hands, breaking the hyoid bone in her neck.
Her 29-year-old uncle, Faisal Malik, was found guilty of causing or permitting her death.
The day after Sarah’s death, the three adults had left their home in Woking, south-west London, flying to Pakistan with five other children.
Her father, a taxi driver, called the police on the way to the airport to report Sarah’s death and left behind a handwritten note saying he had not intended to kill his daughter “but I missed it”.
‘Scary’
After a month on the run, the three returned to the UK and were arrested on the plane after landing. The other five children remain in Pakistan.
There was outrage in the UK that social services ignored Sara’s brutal treatment after her father withdrew her from school four months before she died.
Her teacher told the court how she arrived in class wearing a hijab, which she tried to cover up marks on her body, which she refused to explain.
Sharif had won custody of Sarah in 2019 after separating from his first wife, despite allegations he was abusing his ex-wife, the jury was told. Sara has also been in and out of foster care.
Around March 2023, after seeing injuries on her face, Sara’s school referred the case to children’s services, who looked into the incident, but took no action.
The family moved home in April 2023 and Urfan told the school that Sara would be home-schooled from then on.
“None of us can imagine how appalling and brutal Sarah’s treatment was in the final weeks of her short life,” Libby Clarke of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said after the sentencing.
‘Failed’
Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza said: “There is no doubt that Sara was failed in the starkest terms by the safety net of the services around her.”
“Even before she was born, she was known for social care – and yet she fell off their radar so completely that by the time she died, she was invisible to everyone.”
Sharif and his first wife, Olga, a Pole who was Sarah’s birthplace, were well known in social services even before she was born.
She and two older children had been taken into care after abuse, before being returned to their mother when the couple separated.
In 2019, a judge decided to entrust the care of Sara and an older brother to Urfan, despite his history of abuse.
On the day she died, Urfan hit Sarah twice in the stomach with the metal leg of a high chair as she lay unconscious in her stepmother’s arms, accusing the child of faking it.
Beinash and Faisal did not plead at trial and have expressed no remorse for their actions.
Her case is the latest in a string of child cruelty cases that have sparked public outrage alongside repeated pledges by authorities to “learn lessons” and prevent further tragedies.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged after Wednesday’s verdict to strengthen safeguards for home-schooled children.
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