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Sara Sharif’s father has told a jury that he is “fully responsible” for the death of his 10-year-old daughter.
In a dramatic admission at the Old Bailey, the taxi driver said “I accept every single thing” while his wife, Beinash Batool, sobbed in the dock.
In the early hours of August 10 last year, Sharif had called Surrey Police after fleeing to Pakistan saying he had beaten his daughter “severely” for being “mischievous”, and that she had died.
Despite this, he continued to deny her murder, telling jurors: “He died because of me. I didn’t want to kill him.”
Earlier, Sharif sought to blame Batool for the murder of his daughter, who was found dead in a bunkbed at the family home in Woking, Surrey, with a catalog of injuries.
The schoolboy suffered dozens of serious injuries including human bite marks and iron burns, as well as multiple broken bones and a traumatic brain injury, jurors have heard.
Sharif, Batool and Sara’s uncle, Faisal Malik, 29, formerly of Hammond Road, Woking, deny murdering Sara and causing or allowing her death.
Cross-examining for Batool, Caroline Carberry KC asked Sharif about the note he had left next to his daughter’s body before the flight from Gatwick to Islamabad.
There he wrote “love you Sara” on the first page, then said: “Whoever sees this note, I am Urfan Sharif who killed my son by beating him.”
Carberry asked if he really killed his daughter by beating him and Sharif replied: “Yes, she died because of me.”
The lawyer said: “In the week before he died, he had several fractures to his body, didn’t he, and you were the one who sustained those injuries?”
Defendant replied: “Yes.”
Sharif admitted causing injuries, burns and bites, and added: “I am responsible. I am fully responsible.”
He admitted to causing a fracture to Sara by hitting her with a cricket bat or a pole.
Asked if he broke Sara’s hyoid neck bone, he repeated: “I can take responsibility. I accept everything.”
Ms Carberry continued: “I suggest on the night of August 6 you beat Sara.”
Speaking just above a whisper in the witness box, Sharif replied: “I accept everything.”
Mr Justice Cavanagh called for a short break before Ms Carberry continued to question the defendant in detail about what he had admitted.
He said: “Do you accept that you killed her by beating her? Do you accept that you have beaten Sara severely over the past few weeks?
“Do you accept that you used the cricket bat to beat him. Do you accept that you used the cricket bat as a weapon on him on several occasions? Do you accept that you used the cricket bat by force?”
The defendant replied: “Yes ma’am”.
Mr Carberry continued: “Did you accept the post-mortem evidence that the fractures – at least 25 of them – were caused by you during the assault with the weapon?”
He asked what Sara had done, in her mind, to deserve such treatment, saying: “Are you angry with her because in the summer of last year she started to harm herself? And she started vomiting, didn’t she?
“And when you hit him hard and repeatedly with the cricket bat, you wanted to hurt him, didn’t you? And you knew that by hitting him the way you did, you weren’t just going to bruise his body. You hit him with intent will cause him serious harm.”
The defendant agreed.
Mr Carberry said: “You have pleaded not guilty to murder. Do you want to be given another sentence?”
Sharif replied: “Yes.”
However, when the court resumed in the evening, Sharif maintained that he did not kill his daughter and that he “had no intention of killing her”.
When asked what he meant, the accused cried and said: “I was wrong. I didn’t think anything of it. I don’t think so.”
He admitted he had repeatedly hit Sara with a cell phone, using the cell phone to hit her on the head.
During yesterday’s proceedings, Sharif denied being attracted to his younger wife, whom he met when he was 20, because he was the victim of “honour-based abuse”.
A message read to the jury from Batool to his sister referred to him abusing Sara repeatedly, and said: “I’m so stupid. I don’t want to live in an abusive relationship … seriously I’m done with this.
Sharif has a previous history of domestic violence, which he denies, including being ordered to do an offenders’ program in 2016 and accused of abusing three former partners.
Despite social services’ concerns about the risk it poses, they successfully fought for Sara’s custody in 2019 after her relationship with her mother Olga deteriorated.
