Sara Sharif’s father told police “I’ve killed my daughter”, claiming “I legally punished her, and she died,” after fleeing to Pakistan, a court has heard.
Urfan Sharif dialled 999 in the early hours of 10 August last year, when he and the rest of his family were already thousands of miles away.
Sara Sharif, 10, was found with dozens of injuries, including bruising, burns and broken bones when her body found in an upstairs bedroom on a bottom bunk bed in her home in Woking, Surrey.
In an eight-and-a-half minute phone call played to jurors in the Old Bailey, minicab driver Sharif, 42, told the operator: “I’ve killed my daughter”.
He also said: “I legally punished her, and she died,” saying “she was naughty”, and adding: “I beat her up, it wasn’t my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much”.
Police later found a note in his handwriting, which said: “It’s me Urfan Sharif who killed my daughter by beating”, and “I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost it… I am running away because I am scared.”
But prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC said Sara had been subjected to repeated serious violence over a significant period of time.
Sharif is on trial with his wife and Sara’s stepmother, Beinash Batool, 30, and Sara’s uncle, Faisal Malik, 28.
They each deny murder and causing or allowing the death of a child between 16 December 2022 and 9 August 2023 and will blame each other, the court heard.
“At the heart of this case lies a simple but depressing truth. A little girl, a 10-year-old girl, was found dead in her home,” said Mr Emlyn Jones.
“She had been the victim of assault and physical abuse for weeks and weeks, at least,” he said.
“Sara had not just been beaten up. Her treatment, certainly in the last few weeks of her life, had been appalling; it had been brutal.
“And throughout, these three defendants were the adults living in the house where Sara had lived, living in the house where Sara had suffered and living in the house where Sara died.”
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