Sara Sharif ‘had 11 separate fractures to her backbone earlier than her loss of life’

Sara Sharif was burned with an iron, tied to heating pipe and suffered bite marks, bruises and 11 separate fractures to her spine in the weeks before her death, a court heard today. 

She sustained fractures to her right collar bone, both shoulder blades, both arms, both hands, three separate fingers, bones near the wrist in each hand and two ribs.

It was estimated that some of the fractures were at least six weeks old, whole others were fewer than 10 days old.

Prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones, KC, told jurors at the Old Bailey today that multiple fractures to 10-year-old Sara’s hyoid bone suggested there had been incidents where she had been strangled in the weeks before her death. 

‘There are other, perhaps even more disturbing, types of injury,’ he said.  ‘The evidence shows that Sara appears to have been bitten.’

The court was earlier told how her father Urfan Sharif went on the run to Pakistan after battering his daughter to death.

The 42-year-old is said to have told police that ‘she was ‘naughty’, adding: ‘I beat her up, it wasn’t my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much.’

Police raced to the family home in Surrey where they found the schoolgirl dead lying under the covers in her bunk bed.

Beside her battered body was a note allegedly in Sharif’s handwriting which read: ‘It’s me Urfan Sharif who killed my daughter by beating. I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost it.’ He added: ‘I am running away because I am scared.’ 

Sara had five bite marks on her lower left arm, and one on her inner left thigh which indicated the teeth had been ‘dragged’ across her skin, the court heard.  

Mr Emlyn Jones said: ‘The two male defendants have provided dental impressions for the purposes of comparison – and they have both been excluded – the expert’s opinion is that their teeth exclude them from being responsible.

‘Beinash Batool has refused to provide a dental impression for comparison purposes.’

The third category of injury suffered by Sara was burns.

‘Not only are these horrible and clearly extremely painful injuries, but the apparent manner of their infliction tells us a good deal about how Sara was being treated,’ continued Mr Emlyn Jones.

‘You can see two areas of injury to the buttocks, with the wound to the right buttock clearly much the larger of the two.

‘That wound to the right buttock was approximately 50x60mm. It was a full thickness defect meaning that the overlying skin has been completely lost.’

He added: ‘There was no evidence of residual adhesives, such as you might find if a dressing had been applied to the wound.

‘In Dr Martin’s view, this injury had been caused by contact with a hot, flat surface.

‘Specifically, it appears to have been caused by the sole-plate of a domestic iron, applied with pressure.

‘In his view, this had been done at least two weeks prior to Sara’s death, and probably longer than that. It would, of course, have been extremely painful and had not been treated.’

The iron was placed with the larger area of the sole on the right buttock and the tip reaching over to the left, it was said.

An iron has been recovered from the house and the injuries suffered by Sara do correspond with the size and shape of that iron.

Mr Jones said to jurors: ‘It is a matter for you, of course, but you may have little difficulty in concluding that the application of a hot iron to that part of Sara’s body can only have been deliberate.’ 

Mr Jones told jurors that Sharif and his family fled on August 9 last year leaving the body of his daughter behind following a ‘brutal’ campaign of violence lasting weeks.

Two days after the murder, Sharif is said to have dialled 999 at 2.47am on August 10 when he was already ‘thousands of miles away’ from the scene.

Mr Jones said: ‘In that call, Urfan Sharif began by asking the operator to take down his address. It sounds like he is crying. The operator interrupted and said ”take a deep breath and tell me what’s happened”.

‘999 operators are used to hearing all kinds of dreadful things, but this one cannot have expected the answer he got to that question. Urfan Sharif told him ”I’ve killed my daughter”.

‘He used an odd expression: ”I legally punished her, and she died”.

‘A little later, when asked for more detail, he added ”she was naughty”, and then ”I beat her up, it wasn’t my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much”.’

Describing the appalling scene that police later found, the prosecutor said: ‘In an upstairs bedroom, on a bottom bunk bed, the police found the body of a little girl, lying in bed, under the cover, as if asleep. But she was not asleep. She was dead.’

Mr Emlyn Jones went on: ‘When Urfan Sharif said, in that call, ”I beat her up”, he came nowhere near to describing the extent of the violence and physical abuse Sara had suffered; not just at the time of her death, but repeatedly, over time; she had been the victim of assault and physical abuse for weeks and weeks, at least. 

‘The doctors found dozens of separate injuries, externally and internally, when they examined Sara’s body.

‘She had suffered extensive bruising; burns; broken bones, old and new.

‘So no, Sara had not just been beaten up. Her treatment, certainly in the last few weeks of her life, had been appalling; it had been brutal.’

Police later charged Sharif, his wife Beinash Batool, 30, and his younger brother Faisal Malik, 29, who were all living in the house at the time of the murder.

Today the prosecutor told jurors that Sharif now claims that his ‘apparent confessions were false’ and that he was only saying those things to protect others.

Batool’s case is that ‘her husband was a violent disciplinarian, who regularly assaulted Sara’, but she was scared of her husband, jurors were told.

She wept in the dock today as jurors were played audio of the harrowing 999 call lasting eight-and-a-half minutes.

The stepmother, wearing a tan jacket, bowed her head sobbing as the court heard that Sharif had called 999 just an hour after the family landed in Islamabad on August 10.

In the call, Sharif refused to reveal his location, revealing only that he was driving a relation’s car, jurors were told.

He allegedly told police: ‘She is only 10 years old, oh my god. I did something and she died.’

When asked about her injuries and whether Sara was still breathing, he is said to have told the 999 operator that she was dead adding: ‘I tried to resuscitate.. she is dead I’m telling you.’

He added: ‘I’m a cruel father. I’m driving, I’ll come back’.

Sharif promised to go to Woking police station repeating: ‘I’ll come back, I’ll face the death sentence.’

As police continued to ask where he was, the phone call abruptly ended.

Mr Emlyn Jones said all three defendants had played a part in a ‘campaign of abuse’ that led to Sara’s death on August 8 last year.

He told jurors: ‘Ask yourselves, how could just one person have carried out so much abuse, so many assaults, without the others knowing about it and witnessing it with their own eyes?

‘If any one of them was not a part of it, but had seen it, why then was nothing done to stop it, or report it?’

He continued: ‘Each of them denies that they were the one responsible for any of that violence and abuse.

‘Each of them seeks to deflect the blame onto one or both of the others, to shift responsibility away from themselves, onto someone else.

‘In other words, they are pointing the finger at each other.’

Malik claimed that although he was living in the house he was ‘entirely unaware of any abuse’, the court was told. 

Sharif, Batool and Malik deny murder and causing or allowing the death of a child.

All three defendants deny murder.

The trial continues.