Sara Sharif ‘had a plastic home-made hood taped over her head’

Sara Sharif had a plastic bag taped around her head as a ‘home-made hood’ and was beaten with a cricket bat, a court heard today. 

The 10-year-old’s father Urfan Sharif is accused of battering his daughter to death before fleeing to Pakistan last August after subjecting the schoolgirl to weeks of brutal abuse.

Months before the murder, neighbours noted that Sara had started to wear a hijab in January 2023, which Prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones, KC, said was a bid to conceal the appalling injuries she was receiving at home.

Around the same time neighbours reported hearing sounds of screaming and crying coming from Sara’s home, jurors were told.

Primary school staff noticed bruising under Sara’s eyes and on her chin in March 2023, but the victim gave ‘multiple conflicting stories as to how she got the bruises’ and teachers observed that she would often pull her hijab to hide her face, it was said.

Sara’s body was found in an upstairs bedroom of her home in Woking, Surrey, on August 10 last year after her father called police and confessed to killing her, jurors have heard.

When police searched the home after the murder they found Sara’s blood on the kitchen floor and on a hoover.

Leaning against a brick outhouse was a bloodstained cricket bat which bore Sara’s blood.

Inside the outhouse officers found a rolling pin, which also had Sara’s DNA.

In a wendy house in the garden, the police also discovered a belt, which bore Sara’s DNA as well as that of her father Sharif and her uncle Faisal Malik, jurors heard.

In addition, police found a plastic-coated metal pole in the outhouse, which experts matched to the shape of the bruises Sara suffered.

Prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones showed jurors images of the items found in the house, saying: ‘You can now look again at the bruises and broken bones Sara had suffered with a clearer understanding of how some of those injuries appear to have been inflicted.’

Officers also found bits of plastic bag bound up with parcel tape in an outbuilding that Mr Emlyn Jones described as ‘home-made hoods’. 

‘They had been placed over Sara’s face and then taped in place,’ he told the court. 

The hoods were stained with Sara’s blood and saliva and allegedly contained Sharif’s fingerprints.

Police tested a number of household items as they started to ‘see weapons everywhere’ when they learnt what had happened to Sara.

In a shed at the back of the house was a length of black rope which bore hairs ripped from Sara’s head and a number of rolls of parcel tape.

The court heard Sara’s 30-year-old stepmother Beinash Batool bought 12 rolls of parcel tape in July 2023, just nine days after buying six rolls from Amazon.

Jurors were told that the tape was used to construct the ‘home-made hoods’.

Discarded in bins outside the family home were towels and Sara’s leggings, which were soaking wet with urine, as well as a soiled nappy Sara had been forced to wear, jurors heard.

The prosecutor told jurors: ‘Consider for a moment what it would take to keep Sara tied up, taped up or retrained, or hooded, in the way that these objects indicate. 

‘If this was being done by one of the adults in the house – why aren’t the others intervening, why aren’t the others releasing her? Why aren’t the others helping her, preventing this terrible treatment?

‘It is one thing to fix these hoods over her head, to tape them in place – but how was her continued restraint being maintained?’

Mr Emlyn Jones said Sharif  removed his daughter from the school register in April 2023, saying she would be home schooled, which meant she was ‘not seen by anyone in the outside world’ prior to the murder.

The Old Bailey heard that neighbours of the family’s cramped home in Surrey often heard screaming and the sound of a child crying accompanied by ‘banging and rattling’ as if someone was trying to alert someone that they were trapped behind a door.

Neighbour Rebecca Spencer said she would often hear screams, crying and then ‘deathly quiet’ when a distraught child fell silent.

Mr Emlyn Jones said: ‘On other occasions Ms Spencer would hear other bangs from the flat and which sounded like someone had been hit or smacked….Ms Spencer did consider reporting what she heard to social services but ultimately decided against it.’

A new tenant Chloe Redwin similarly described hearing a child screaming followed by their Batool shouting, ‘shut the f*** up’ and ‘go to your room you f****** b******’, it was said.

Ms Redwin would also frequently hear the mother refer to children as ‘c****’, jurors were told.

The prosecutor said: ‘On occasions Ms Redwin would hear sounds of smacking; they were shockingly loud and would be followed by gut-wrenching screams of a young female child.

‘Over the screaming she would hear the mother shout, ‘shut up’ and sometimes the sounds of further smacking would be heard followed by shouting.’

None of the neighbours alerted the authorities as Sara seemed ‘smartly dressed’ and there were no obvious signs of injury, it was said.

The court heard that Sharif was ‘conscious’ of what was going on, because he would apologise for the noise.

Local residents observed that Sara appeared to have a number of responsibilities within the household, including taking the bins out each week and hanging up washing.

The family removed their Ring doorbell camera before they fled to Pakistan on August 9, the day after the murder, it was said.

The prosecutor said: ‘You might want to ask yourselves why that would have been done; and what its removal might tell you about the presence of mind of whoever removed it, as the family fled to Pakistan, leaving behind them Sara’s dead body and an otherwise empty house which would inevitably be treated as a crime scene.’

Sara’s stepmother Beinash Batool messaged her sister Qandeela in 2020 complaining that Sharif was ‘always shouting and hitting’ his child, it was said.

In May 2021 she allegedly messaged her sister claiming: ‘Urfan beat the c**p out of Sara. She’s covered in bruises, literally beaten black.’

Batool claimed that she wanted to report Sharif saying: ‘I feel really sorry for Sara’ adding ‘poor girl can’t walk’.

In February 2022, she allegedly told her other sister Amima that her husband was ‘beating Sara up…cos she’s being naughty’.

She went on: ‘Sara has anxiety, whatever she eats she vomits out…something happens to Sara I will not be able to forgive myself.’

In the summer of 2022, Batool is said to have messaged Qandeela again saying: ‘I can’t even cover it up. He beat Sara up yesterday and I can’t send her to school on Monday looking like that.’

The prosecutor told jurors: ‘It is the prosecution’s case that Sara’s death was caused by the combined actions of all three adults in the house; for the systematic, if not daily then certainly frequent assault and abuse of that little girl could not have been done without the participation, assistance and encouragement of them all.

‘She could not have been kept restrained without that restraint being supervised and maintained, which takes, effectively, teamwork.’

Sara died on August 8 last year after suffering an appalling catalogue of injuries following a ‘brutal’ campaign of violence lasting weeks, jurors have heard.

Her whole body was covered in bruises, bite marks, puncture wounds and abrasions from ‘significant and repetitive blunt force trauma’, it was said.

She had been tied up, possibly to a hot pipe, scalded with hot water, and had burn marks on her buttock from an iron.

A post-mortem examination revealed she had been ‘beaten’ with objects, strangled, and was ‘left severely unwell, close to death’ from a series of head injuries.

In addition, Sara had 11 spinal fractures and suffered broken ribs, collar bone, shoulder blades, both of her arms, her hands and some of her fingers were fractured.

Following her death on August 8 last year, Sharif and his family spent £5,180 on flights to Pakistan leaving the next day, the court heard.

Sharif then rung 999 an hour after they landed in Pakistan on August 10, allegedly telling police: ‘I killed my daughter.’

After a month on the run the family flew back to Gatwick where police arrested Sharif, his wife and his younger brother Faisal Malik, 29, who were all living in the house at the time of the murder.

Mr Emlyn Jones said all three defendants had played a part in Sara’s murder.

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

The trial continues.