Sara Sharif’s body was found in a bunkbed at her family home in Woking, Surrey, after allegedly being subjected to years of abuse at the hands of her father and family members
The father of Sara Sharif has denied stripping her battered body and jet washing it in the garden as the family prepared themselves to flee to Pakistan.
Taxi driver Urfan Sharif, 42, his wife Beinash Batool, 30, and brother Faisal Malik, 29, are accused of being party to years-long abuse which culminated in her death last August. The 10-year-old was wearing clean clothes when her body was found in a bunkbed at the family home in Woking, Surrey, after Sharif called police on arrival in Islamabad, the Old Bailey has heard.
Her soiled leggings and nappy were discarded in the garden near a jetwash with packaging tape and hoods in the bin, jurors were told. Sharif has admitted tying the girl up with the tape and hitting her with a cricket bat, metal pole and mobile phone, even whacking her in the stomach as she lay dying in Batool’s lap.
But he has denied biting her on the arm and thigh, burning her with a domestic iron and boiling water and putting her head in a hood as he meted out punishments for “naughty” behaviour. On Friday, prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC suggested all three defendants were involved, despite Sharif’s claim that he took “full responsibility” for Sara’s death.
On the defendant’s actions after her death, he said: “You are all in this together. A problem you caused together, you all have to run away together. You were all worried about yourselves, all three of you were thinking about yourselves and getting away with it.”
On the same night as Sara’s death, Batool was on the phone to a travel agent arranging flights to Pakistan for the next day, the court heard. Replaying the call, Mr Emlyn Jones said it was “brutal” that both she and Sharif sounded so “calm” as Sara’s body was upstairs.
Mr Emlyn Jones suggested the evidence showed she was then taken into the garden, stripped of her dirty leggings and nappy and cleaned.
He asked: “She wasn’t in the garden? You haven’t taken her to the shed? You had a lot to do to tidy up, the house was left immaculately tidy and the bin was full of packing tape, various hoods. And the body of Sara was cleaned, wasn’t it?
“She wasn’t in the clothes she died in when you left the house, so she had been cleaned and washed? There was a jetwash out in the garden with her dirty clothes and the rest of the rubbish. Those are the leggings Sara died in, entwined with a filthy nappy, bundled up with two towels, soaking wet.”
Sharif had told jurors he only cleaned Sara’s head and did not remove her clothes. Mr Emlyn Jones continued: “Somebody did get her out of her clothes, somebody did wash her. Did he do it – Faisal?”
The defendant replied: “No sir, she wasn’t washed.” The prosecutor queried how Malik’s McDonald’s work uniform came to be thrown in the bin outside along with packaging tape and hoods placed on top.
Sharif replied: “I don’t know, sir.” Mr Emlyn Jones said: “We can take it, Mr Sharif, that until the moment comes the three of you decide you are going to run away to Pakistan, Mr Malik needs his McDonald’s uniform. And then everything changes.”
Sharif denied anything was thrown away on the night Sara died. Mr Emlyn Jones said: “When you left for Pakistan you had no plan to come back. Your plan was to go away so you could get away with what you had done.”
Sharif insisted that he did come back to the UK, but the prosecutor asserted that was only because of pressure exerted on the family in Pakistan. Re-examining, Sharif’s lawyer Naeem Mian KC asked him about the injuries he did not take responsibility for – the burns, bites and use of a hood.
Weeping, Sharif denied doing this, but said: “I take responsibility for everything that happened to my daughter. I am her father, I didn’t do what I should have done.”
Sharif, Batool and Malik, formerly of Hammond Road, Woking, Surrey, deny murder and causing or allowing Sara’s death, and the trial continues.
