Sara Sharif: Evil killer father Urfan Sharif guilty of bashing, biting, burning 10yo

WARNING: GRAPHIC DETAILS

Sara Sharif’s evil killer father was finally brought to justice on Wednesday after a decade of failure by authorities.

Urfan Sharif beat his ten-year-old daughter to death in an act of unspeakable brutality after spending 16 years torturing women and children.

The next day, the 42-year-old taxi driver fled to his native Pakistan with his wife and accomplice Beinash Batool, 30.

He thought he would get away with it after police repeatedly failed to bring charges when assaults were reported by three ex-partners and his own children.

But now, finally, Sara’s father and stepmother face a lifetime behind bars after both were convicted of murder on Wednesday.

Batool wept alongside Sharif’s brother Faisal Malik, 29, who was convicted of causing or allowing her death.

But Sharif stood stony-faced in the Old Bailey dock, showing no hint of emotion as he was unmasked after an eight-week trial.

The shocking case has raised questions about failures by police, social services and Sara’s school, who missed 15 opportunities to save the vulnerable pupil before Sharif battered her to death with a metal pole on August 8 last year.

An independent safeguarding review has been ordered into her murder.

It will examine the circumstances in which a family court judge decided to place the victim in the custody of her cruel father and stepmother in a decision that ultimately would cost her life.

Sara suffered an unimaginable ordeal at the hands of the despicable pair, who bound her arms and legs and secured a plastic bag around her head while they battered her with a cricket bat, metal pole and a rolling pin, strangled her until her neck broke, burnt her with an iron and bit her.

When police found her broken little body dumped under the pink covers of her bunk bed, there were so many injuries – at least 71 externally and 29 fractures – it was impossible to say which wound caused her death.

Now it can be revealed that:

• Sharif was accused of attacking three ex-partners and two of his children, including a baby, who suffered a similar catalogue of bruises, burns and bites, but he was never charged;
• After arriving in the UK on a student visa, the taxi driver preyed on vulnerable women as young as 17 whom he attempted to wed in a sham marriage to get a UK passport;
• In a sickening twist, Sharif escaped justice for so long by claiming he was the real victim, grooming his children to cover for him, including a teenager who was due to testify that he was innocent before Sharif’s dramatic confession to Sara’s killing;
• His wife Batool is a scheming thief and liar who pretended she had twins with another man and already had two secret husbands when she wed Sharif;
• Sharif’s family shielded him in Pakistan after the killing, lying about seeing Sara on video happily having dinner with her family on the night she died;
• Police in Pakistan brought charges against Sharif ’s family, effectively forcing them to tell Sharif to return to the UK.

Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza said the case highlighted “profound weaknesses in our child protection system”, adding: “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. We can have no more reviews, no more strategies, no more debate. When we say ‘never again’, we have to mean it – let that be Sara’s legacy.”

The case comes after tragic failings preceded the deaths of other children including Peter Connelly, known as Baby P, in 2007 and Victoria Climbié in 2000.

Sara’s mother Olga Domin paid an emotional tribute on Wednesday: “My dear Sara, I ask God to please take care of my little girl, she was taken too soon.

“Sara had beautiful, brown eyes and an angelic voice. Sara’s smile could brighten up the darkest room.

“Everyone who knew Sara will know her unique character, her beautiful smile and loud laugh.”

Sara’s grandmother Sylwia Kurz, said of her killers: “These are not people; these are beasts.

“These are wounds that never heal and never will.”

One maternal uncle, who asked not to be named, added: “What matters is that they rot in prison.”

Manipulative bully Sharif first came to the police’s attention in December 2007 after his 18-year-old girlfriend Angelika jumped out of a window to escape him.

Sharif was arrested for false imprisonment, assault, theft and criminal damage, but police said there was “insufficient evidence to progress the investigation”.

“Urfan has two faces. One is kind, nice, very lovely and always apologises,” Angelika told the Mail.

“But the second face, the one people don’t see, it is the devil.”

A subsequent girlfriend was held captive for five days while Sharif sent off her passport for a marriage application in April 2009, but again police said there was insufficient evidence to charge him with false imprisonment.

Within months of meeting Sara’s mother Olga, he was arrested for assaulting her and two children in November 2010.

But yet again police released him without charge after Sharif claimed he was the real victim.

Social services were called repeatedly after children suffered unexplained bruises, bite marks, scratches and burns, but Sharif managed to hoodwink them, blaming his wife or children.

Sara was taken into foster care in 2014, but a family court decided to award Sharif custody in 2019 after Ms Domin was blamed for the attacks.

Sharif’s abuse accelerated, with daily beatings so bad that Sara was forced to wear a hijab to conceal her injuries.

Teachers who described Sara as a bubbly “chatterbox” with dreams of appearing on The X Factor, noticed bruises in June 2022.

But the scared pupil would pull down her hijab and brush off injuries as accidental.

When the school made a referral to social services in March 2023 about bruises on her face, the case was closed with no further action just six days later.

After Sara’s death, Sharif and Batool calmly made plans to flee, calling up a travel agent just an hour later to book flights to Pakistan after washing her bloodied body, hiding the wounds in fresh clothes and arranging her body to look as if she was sleeping.

Only when he had landed in Pakistan, a country with no extradition treaty, did Sharif call 999 to say: “It wasn’t my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much.”

Rachael Wardell, from Surrey County Council, said that until an independent safeguarding review had concluded, a “‘complete picture cannot be understood or commented upon”.

“What is clear from the evidence we’ve heard in court is that the perpetrators went to extreme lengths to conceal the truth from everyone,” she added.

Detective Chief Inspector Craig Emmerson said: “Sara’s death has been one of the most difficult and distressing cases that Surrey Police has ever dealt with.”

The killers will be sentenced on Tuesday.