Sara Sharif’s father ‘takes full responsibility’ for her death in dramatic courtroom admission
Urfan Sharif says his 10-year-old daughter ‘died because of me’ – but continues to deny murder
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Sara Sharif’s father has told jurors he “takes full responsibility” for the death of his 10-year-old daughter.
In a dramatic appearance at the Old Bailey on Wednesday, the taxi driver said “I accept every single thing” while his wife, Beinash Batool, sobbed in the dock.
During the early hours of 10 August last year, Mr Sharif had called Surrey Police after fleeing to Pakistan to say he had beaten his daughter “too much” for being “naughty”, and that she had died.
Despite this, he continues to deny her murder, telling the jurors: “She died because of me. I didn’t want to kill her.”
In a series of shocking admissions, jurors heard:
- Sharif had bound his daughter with brown packing tape before beating her with a pole or a cricket bat
- He admitted to repeatedly hitting her over the head with a mobile phone and tightening his hands around her neck on more than one occasion
- He accepted that he had repeatedly injured his daughter, but denied that he had killed her, saying he “wasn’t thinking”
- Sharif denied using his Marks and Spencer belt to throttle her, and denied burning her buttocks and biting her arm
Previously, Mr Sharif had sought to blame Batool for killing his daughter, who was found dead in a bunkbed at the family home in Woking, Surrey, with a catalogue of injuries.
The schoolgirl suffered dozens of serious wounds including human bite marks and iron burns, as well as multiple fractures and a traumatic brain injury, jurors have heard.
Mr Sharif, Ms Batool, and Sara’s uncle Faisal Malik, 29, formerly of Hammond Road, Woking, deny Sara’s murder and causing or allowing her death.
Cross-examining for Batool, Caroline Carberry KC had asked Mr Sharif about a note he left beside the body of his daughter before taking a flight from Gatwick to Islamabad.
In it he wrote “love you Sara” on the first page followed by the words: “Whoever see this note it’s me Urfan Sharif who killed my daughter by beating.”
Ms Carberry asked if he did indeed kill his daughter by beating and Mr Sharif replied: “Yes, she died because of me.”
The barrister said: “In the weeks before she died she suffered multiple fractures to her body, didn’t she, and it was you who inflicted those injuries?”
The defendant replied: “Yes.”
Mr Sharif accepted causing the injuries, bar burn and bite marks, and added: “I take responsibility. I take full responsibility.”
He admitted causing fractures to Sara by hitting her with a cricket bat or pole. Asked if he broke Sara’s hyoid neck bone, he repeated: “I can take full responsibility. I accept every single thing.”
Ms Carberry went on: “I suggest on the night of the 6th August you badly beat Sara.” Speaking barely above a whisper in the witness box, Mr Sharif replied: “I accept everything.”
Mr Justice Cavanagh called for a short break before Ms Carberry continued to question the defendant in detail about what exactly he was admitting to.
She said: “Do you accept that you killed her by beating her? Do you accept you had been beating Sara severely over a number of weeks?
“Do you accept using the cricket bat to beat her. Do you accept using the cricket bat as a weapon on her on a number of occasions? Do you accept that you used that cricket bat on her with force?”
The defendant replied: “Yes ma’am.”
Mr Carberry went on: “Do you accept the post-mortem evidence that those fractures – at least 25 in number – were caused by you during assaults with a weapon?”
She asked what Sara had done, in his mind, to deserve such treatment, saying: “Were you angry with her because in the summer of last year she had started soiling herself? And she had started vomiting, hadn’t she?
“And when you hit her severely and repeatedly with the cricket bat you intended to hurt her, didn’t you? And you knew that by hitting her in the way that you did you weren’t just going to cause a little bruise to her body. You hit her intending to cause her really serious harm.”
The defendant agreed.
Mr Carberry said: “You have pleaded not guilty to the offence of murder. Would you like that charge to be put to you again?”
Mr Sharif replied: “Yeah.”
However, once the trial resumed in the afternoon, Mr Sharif maintained that he did not murder his daughter and that he “did not intend to kill her”.
When asked what his intentions were, the defendant became tearful as he said: “I did wrong. I didn’t think anything. I wasn’t thinking.”
He admitted he had repeatedly hit Sara with a mobile phone, using it by banging it against her head.
During Tuesday’s proceedings, Mr Sharif denied being attracted to his younger wife, who he met when she was aged 20, due to her being a vulnerable victim of “honour-based abuse”.
Messages read to jurors from Batool to her sister referred to him abusing Sara repeatedly, and said: “I’m so dumb. I don’t want to live in an abusive relationship … seriously I’m so done with this.”
Mr Sharif has a previous history of alleged domestic violence, which he denies, which includes being ordered to undertake a perpetrator programme in 2016 and being accused of abusing three of his former partners.
Despite the concerns of social services about the risks he posed, he had successfully fought for custody of Sara in 2019 after the relationship with her mother Olga had deteriorated.