- Father Urfan Sharif bound to serve a minimum of 40-year jail.
- Batool also given life sentence with minimum 33-year term.
- Sara’s uncle Faisal Malik received jail sentence of 16 years.
A UK court has awarded life imprisonment to the father and stepmother of a 10-year-old girl, British-Pakistani girl, Sara Sharif, who died from prolonged and horrific abuse.
Sharif was found dead in August 2023 at her home in Woking, a town southwest of London, after what prosecutors said was a campaign of “serious and repeated violence”.
The family fled to Pakistan immediately after Sara was killed, before they were arrested in September 2023 at London’s Gatwick airport after flying from Dubai.
Prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones told jurors at the start of the trial that Sara had suffered injuries including burns, multiple broken bones and bite marks.
Sara’s father Urfan Sharif, 43, and his wife Beinash Batool, 30, stood trial at London’s Old Bailey court charged with her murder, which they denied.
Last week, the jury convicted Urfan Sharif and Batool of Sara’s murder. Sara’s uncle Faisal Malik, 29, was found not guilty of murder but guilty of causing or allowing Sara’s death.
Sharif and Batool appeared in the dock at the Old Bailey, where they heard a statement read on behalf of Sara’s mother Olga Domin who called them “executioners”.
“You are sadists, although even this word is not enough for you,” her statement read. “I would say you are executioners.”
Judge John Cavanagh sentenced Sharif to a minimum of 40 years in prison and Batool to a minimum of 33 years. Malik was sentenced to 16 years.
“The courts at the Old Bailey have been witness to many accounts of awful crimes, but few can have been more terrible than the account of the despicable treatment of this poor child that the jury in this case have had to endure,” Cavanagh said.
“It is no exaggeration to describe the campaign of abuse against Sara as torture.”
‘Appalling’
After a month on the run, the three returned to the UK and were arrested on the plane after landing. The five other children remain in Pakistan.
There has been anger in the UK that Sara’s brutal treatment had been missed by social services after her father withdrew her from school four months before she died, AFP reported.
Her teacher told the court how she had arrived in the class wearing a hijab, which she used to try to cover marks on her body which she refused to explain.
Sharif had gained custody of Sara in 2019 after separating from his first wife, despite allegations of being abusive towards his ex-wife.
Around March 2023, after seeing injuries on her face, Sara’s school referred the case to child services, who probed the incident but did not take any action.
In April 2023, Sharif told the school that from then on Sara would be homeschooled.
Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza said: “There can be no doubt that Sara was failed in the starkest terms by the safety net of services around her.”
“Even before she was born, she was known to social care — and yet she fell off their radar so entirely that by the time she died, she was invisible to them all.”
Sharif and his first wife, Olga, a Polish woman who was Sara’s birth mother, were well-known to social services.
In 2019, a judge decided to award the care of Sara and an older brother to Sharif, despite his history of abuse.
The case is the latest in a string of child cruelty cases that have triggered public revulsion alongside repeated pledges from authorities to “learn lessons” and prevent further tragedies.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed after last week’s guilty verdicts to boost safeguards for home-schooled children.
Under the government’s proposed Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, introduced in parliament Tuesday, parents will lose the automatic right to take their children out of school if authorities suspect the child is at risk.
