Sara Sharif Murder Case: Shocking details have emerged in connection with the killing of 10-year-old Sara Sharif during the trial of three family members in UK court, who are accused of murdering her.
Prosecutors have revealed the horrific abuse a British-Pakistani girl endured before her death at her home in Woking, a town southwest of London, in August 2023.
They have termed her abuse as a campaign of "serious and repeated violence".
Sara Sharif's father forced his daughter to do sit-ups all night because she hid his keys and also made the schoolgirl put her hands in the air after beating her, reported The Guardian.
The court was also told that the stepmother in text messages to her older sister described Sharif as a “psycho” who “beat the cr*p out of Sara".
Her father Urfan Sharif (42) who is a taxi driver, his wife and Sara Sharif's stepmother Beinash Batool (30) and the girl's uncle Faisal Malik (29) are on trial at London's Old Bailey court.
Sharif was found dead in bed — with fractured bones, bites and burn marks throughout her body. Police had also recovered a note in which her father claimed he had not intended to kill her but wrote: “I lost it.”
Pathologist and bone specialist Anthony Freemont told the jury that the victim's DNA as well as that of her father and uncle were detected on a cricket bat and both ends of a belt and had dozens of bruises, including bite marks.
Sara's blood was found inside a carrier bag believed to have been put over her head, while blood and hairs were detected on a piece of brown tape, reported AFP.
Freemont concluded that the death was the result of "neck compression" most commonly caused by "manual strangulation".
Four months before her death, Sharif had told Sara's school that she would be home-schooled "with immediate effect". In June 2022 and March 2023, teachers had noted bruising on her body. When Sara was asked about injuries, she hid her head in her arms.
Rebecca Spencer, who lived below the family, said she would hear stepmother Beinash “screaming” and regularly heard shouting, commotions and crying.
Earlier in October, prosecutor William Emlyn Jones said that the discovery was made after her father went to Islamabad and called the police from Pakistan, saying: “I’ve killed my daughter. I legally punished her, and she died.”
He also told the phone operator it wasn't his intention to kill her but he had “beat her up too much," the prosecutor told jurors.
"I beat her, I didn't want to kill her but I beat her too much," he added, claiming she had been "naughty".
The trio were arrested after an extensive search by the police in Pakistan and they were put on a flight to the UK. They were arrested upon arrival at London’s Gatwick Airport.
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