Sara Sharif: Father Urfan confesses to beating daughter to death, but denies murdering her in court

Sara Sharif’s father dramatically admitted beating the schoolgirl to death yesterday – but denied murdering her.

Urfan Sharif, 42, sobbed as he confessed he had ‘whacked’ the ten-year-old with a metal pole a final few times as she lay dying in his wife’s arms.

In a startling admission halfway through his murder trial, Shari f told the Old Bailey that he had hit Sara in the abdomen with the pole because he thought she was feigning illness.

He had received a call from his wife Beinash Batool, 30, warning that she was seriously unwell.

The father refused to let anyone call an ambulance as Sara begged for water and she died just two minutes later on August 8 last year, he said.

In extraordinary scenes, Sharif said he didn’t intend to kill his child, but ‘she died because of me’.

Sobbing, he said: ‘I remember I was crying for my daughter to wake up. I could not believe she passed away.’

Jurors wept as Sharif confessed that he regularly assaulted the youngster, binding her arms and legs with parcel tape before battering her around the head with a cricket bat, causing devastating injuries in the days and weeks before she died.

The taxi driver admitted that he had ordered Batool to buy 12 rolls of parcel tape so he could tie her up.

Dabbing his eyes with a tissue, he described hitting his child’s face with the bat and beating her with a metal pole, which was the leg of a child’s high chair.

Sharif accepted breaking Sara’s neck by throttling her with his own hands, hitting her around the head with a mobile phone and causing at least 25 fractures all over her body ‘using a weapon’.

The schoolgirl was found dead in her bunk bed at home in Woking, Surrey, after Sharif and Batool fled to Pakistan where he made a 999 call on August 10 last year confessing: ‘I killed my daughter.’

Police also found a note by her body saying: ‘Whoever see this note it’s me Urfan Sharif who killed my daughter by beating.’

Sara had suffered at least 71 injuries, including dozens of broken bones. Throughout the trial Sharif denied causing any of the injuries, insisting, ‘I have never been violent’ and blaming Batool for being the ‘villain of the piece’.

But yesterday, his seventh day on the stand, Sharif suddenly asked if he could say something before telling jurors he accepted ‘full responsibility’ for her death.

He said: ‘I did what I did. I want to admit it, that it is all my fault.

‘That I admit what I said in my (999) phone call and my written note.’

Caroline Carberry, KC, defending Batool, asked: ‘Do you accept that you killed Sara by beating her?’

Sharif whispered: ‘Yes.’

Ms Carberry asked: ‘Do you accept that you had been beating Sara severely over a number of weeks?’

Sharif answered: ‘Yes.’

When asked what Sara had done to deserve such beatings, Sharif muttered: ‘Nothing.’

He said he had been angry after she started vomiting and defecating in fear, accepting that he punched and kicked her to get her in the bath.

Ms Carberry added: ‘You have pleaded not guilty to the offence of murder.

‘Would you like the charge to be put to you again?’

Sharif answered: ‘Yeah.’

But after an adjournment to speak to his defence barrister, Sharif maintained he was not guilty of murder.

Ms Carberry asked: ‘When you confirmed earlier today you beat her to death and you intended to cause her really serious harm that was an admission to the offence of murder?’

Sharif mumbled: ‘No. I was not thinking. I didn’t work it out.’

He added: ‘She died because of me. I didn’t want to kill her.’

Sharif, Batool and Sara’s uncle Faisal Malik, 29, all deny murder and causing or allowing the death of a child.

The trial continues.