The father and stepmother of Sara Sharif, an Anglo-Pakistani girl who died at the age of 10 in 2023 due to ill-treatment, were sentenced on Tuesday to life sentencealmost a week after being found guilty of his death.
“It is not an exaggeration to call it torture,” said the judge at the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, known as the Old Bailey, in London. For more than an hour he explained his decision, detailing the “vile” acts that the little girl suffered.
His father, Urfan Sharif, 43, will not be able to leave prison until he has served a 40-year sentence. The girl’s stepmother, Beinash Batool, 30, will have to be detained for at least 33 years.
The girl’s uncle, Faisal Malik, 29, brother of the girl’s father, who lived with the couple in the eight months before Sara Sharif’s death, was found guilty of “cause or make possible his death” and was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Six days after the same court found the three accused guilty, on Wednesday, December 11, the verdict created so much excitement in the United Kingdom that it was broadcast live on television.
Sara Sharif’s body was found on August 10, 2023 at the family home in Woking, about 45 kilometers southwest of London, after a call from her father from Pakistanafter fleeing with his partner and his other five children.
Upon arriving in Islamabad, Sharif called the British police and told them that he had beaten his daughter “too much.” The trial revealed that Sara Sharif’s body had 25 fractureswhich a doctor could only explain by violent and repeated blows. The girl’s body also showed 70 marks from blows or injuries.
The three suspects fled to Pakistan the day before the body was discovered, leading to an international search. Finally, after a month of reflection, they decided to return to the United Kingdom in September 2023, where they were arrested and charged.
Sara Sharif’s biological parents had separated in 2015, and the little girl initially lived with her mother, Olga, of Polish origin, until Justice decided in 2019 that they should be with her father.
The trial highlighted the failure of social services in the girl’s case, whose custody was taken from his mother and handed over to her father, who did not detect the violence she suffered despite warnings from her school. The Government will soon present a bill to better protect vulnerable children.
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