Sara Sharif’s father and stepmother have been found guilty of her murder after the little girl was found with horrific injuries akin to being ‘kicked by a horse’

‘Bubbly and confident’ schoolgirl Sara Sharif was just 10 years old when she was found dead and alone by police in her Woking home.

The little girl’s lifeless body lay beneath the blanket of her bunkbed, revealing a horrific number of injuries and exposing her harrowing home life.

Her father Urfan Sharif, 42, and stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, have today been found guilty the Old Bailey and face life behind bars. Her uncle Faisal Malik, 29, has also been found guilty of causing or allowing her death.

Police made the devastating discovery on August 10 last year, following a frantic phone call from her father Urfan Sharif, who sobbed as he told the operator: “I’ve killed my daughter. I legally punished her, and she died.”

During the eight-and-a-half-minute phone call, Sharif, who later claimed to have made a false confession, wept as he insisted: “I beat her up, it wasn’t my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much.”

Sara was just 10 years old ( 

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However, court reports later revealed the true extent of the family’s punishment on the ten-year-old, which included being hooded, bitten, burned with an iron, and beaten so badly that she suffered 25 broken bones in injuries akin to being “kicked by a horse”, over the course of two years.

By the time Sara’s body was found, taxi driver Sharif, 42, had fled to Pakistan alongside Sara’s stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, her uncle, Faisal Malik, 29, and five other children aged between one and 13 years old. All three adults were arrested after returning to UK soil in September 2023.

Tied up and bitten

Doctors who examined Sara’s body concluded that Sara had sustained an “awful constellation of injuries” and had been tied up and restrained “perhaps for lengthy periods”.

Jurors heard that Sara was found to have 10 fractures to her spine, as well as breaks to her right collarbone, two ribs, both shoulder blades, both arms and hands and three fingers. Medics also discovered what appeared to be five bite marks on Sara’s left arm, as well as one on her inner thigh. Tests discovered these marks were not made by the two male defendants, while step-mum Batool refused to provide a dental impression for ‘comparison purposes’.

Burned with a blazing iron

A 6cm by 5cm burn mark from an iron was also discovered on Sara’s buttocks during the post-mortem. Commenting on this mark, Emlyn Jones KC said: “It appears to have been caused by the sole plate of a domestic iron, applied with pressure. It would, of course, have been extremely painful. It had not been treated.”

Mr Jones told the court: “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. And throughout, these three defendants were the adults living in the house where Sara had lived, where she had suffered, and where she had died.”

Sara died in her own home following a campaign of torture ( 

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Sara’s injuries were so severe they were comparable to having been ‘kicked by a horse’ ( 

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Injuries comparable to being ‘kicked by a horse’

Speaking before the court back in October, Professor Owen Arthurs, consultant paediatric radiologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital, said Sara’s injuries were so severe they were comparable to having been “kicked by a horse”.

Professor Arthurs told the Old Bailey: “Spinal fractures (in children) are very rare, even in specialist trauma centres, and they are usually caused by high impact, high trauma incidents, such as road traffic accidents, falls from height or being kicked by a horse.”

According to Professor Arthurs, Sara’s many injuries, including the spinal fractures, were sustained over a period of several weeks. The shoulder blade fractures, which Professor Arthurs noted were “unusual”, had been caused by “blunt force trauma”.

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“Many fractures can occur accidentally, and many fractures can occur from a single event. But my opinion was that they were very unusual, and they cannot be explained by accidental mechanisms, nor can they be explained by any single high-impact trauma event. My opinion for the most likely explanation for the constellation of the injuries are multiple episodes of blunt force trauma inflicted over several weeks.”

Strangulation

Professor Arthurs added: “Scapular fractures are very rare in children. It is quite difficult to fracture your scapular in a sporting injury or anything like that. These are almost certainly caused by direct blunt-force trauma to the body. I can’t think of an accidental way whereby you would fracture both scapulars at the same time.

“I haven’t ever seen a hyoid fracture in a child, even in those when we have a history of ligature strangulation,’ Professor Arthurs said. “Presence of a hyoid fracture suggests severe neck compression. The most likely cause here is manual strangulation.”

Her body was discovered in a bunk bed ( 

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Fractures across 25 locations

Sara suffered fractures all over her body in 25 areas and one “extremely rare” neck injury not seen before by a radiologist on a child. Some of the injuries were fresh and just ten days old when Sara was found dead.

Professor Arthurs confirmed a number of timelines regarding Sara’s fractures, including a trapezium bone fracture in the right hand that was less than ten days old and the fractures to her shoulder blades, which were up to six weeks old. One of Sara’s vertebrae had begun to heal after a fracture but had been broken again, while her ten spinal fractures were less than four weeks old.

Osteoarticular pathologist Professor Anthony Freemont also told the court that Sara’s hyoid bone fracture occurred three months before her death, while the fractures in her left hand had been caused around two weeks before.

Last month, Sharif admitted to being responsible for Sara’s death, saying he had beaten her repeatedly with a cricket bat, metal pole and mobile phone and throttled her with his hands. He denied inflicting the bite marks and burns or using a homemade hood to punish her.