LONDON (AP) — The father and stepmother of a 10-year-old girl found dead in her home in England were found guilty Wednesday of her murder.
Urfan Sharif, 42, was accused of Sara Sharif’s murder alongside his partner, 30-year-old Beinash Batool. His brother, 29-year-old Faisal Malik, was found guilty of causing or allowing the girl's death.
Police found Sara’s body under a blanket in a bunk bed at her home in Woking, southwest of London, on Aug. 10, 2023, with dozens of injuries including extensive bruising, burns and fractures. A post-mortem examination concluded she died of unnatural causes.
Prosecutors have said that all three defendants played a part in a “campaign of abuse” against Sara in the weeks leading to her death. The three fled the U.K. for Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, on Aug. 9, the day after Sara was believed to have died.
The discovery was made after Urfan Sharif called U.K. police from Pakistan to say he had “legally punished her, and she died,” prosecutors said. He told the phone operator it wasn’t his intention to kill her but he had “beat her up too much,” they said.
Police in Pakistan found the three suspects after an extensive search and put them on a flight to the U.K. They were arrested upon arrival at London’s Gatwick Airport.
Batool and Malik had declined to give evidence. They denied involvement in the abuse.
Prosecutor William Emlyn Jones has said all three defendants lived in the same house as Sara and that it was “inconceivable” that just one of them had acted alone.
He alleged that each of the suspects sought to point the finger at the others. He said Sharif’s case was that Batool, Sara’s stepmother, was responsible for the girl’s death, and he made a false confession to protect her.
He said that violence against Sara became so normalized that no one batted an eye when she appeared with bruises at a family barbeque.
Yet Sara was feisty and dreamed of being a fairytale princess. Her spirit came across on a video taken just two days before her death showing her dancing at home, despite multiple broken bones and iron burns on her bottom.
“Seeing the footage of Sara laughing and joking even when she had signs of injuries to her body and knowing what a happy child she was at school, she loved singing and dancing, and knowing what happened to her, those are the most affecting parts of the case,” Libby Clark, a specialist prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service said.
Sylvia Hui And Danica Kirka, The Associated Press