Urfan Sharif’s family refused to believe he killed his daughter, Sara, even after he told jurors: “I want to admit that it’s all my fault.”
His brother Imran Sharif told the Guardian at the time from the family’s eight-bedroom home in Pakistan’s northern city of Jhelum: “Urfan’s admission has left us devastated and heartbroken.
“Urfan is under significant pressure and I firmly believe that my brother is innocent and he can’t kill his own daughter, he was not present at home when the incident happened.”
He said Sharif must have been motivated to protect his wife, Beinash Batool. Sharif, 43, and Batool, were both found guilty of murder on Wednesday after an eight-week trial at the Old Bailey. Sharif’s brother Faisal Malik, 29, was found guilty of causing or allowing the death of a child.
Sharif’s family had cast blame on Batool, who they stressed had refused to give her dental impressions during Surrey police’s investigation.
Before his son’s dramatic courtroom confession, Sharif’s father, Muhammad Sharif, said: “As a stepmother, Beinash Batool’s behaviour was not good with Sara and she always used to scold her constantly. [Sara] had complained to Urfan about Batool’s behaviour and she [Batool] denied it and said the children are lying.”
Sharif, a taxi driver, had also sought to point the finger at Batool before his U-turn. He told jurors she was a liar who for years had tricked him – and social services – into believing she had twins from a previous marriage.
According to Sharif’s evidence, he met Batool in late 2014 and she told him she was divorced but did not feel comfortable discussing her past.
A year later, she told Sharif her ex-husband’s name and revealed he had been jailed for drug dealing. Batool told Sharif she had to visit her ex-husband in prison to discuss their twin children. “That was the first time she mentioned to me she had twins,” Sharif told jurors. “I was shocked.”
He said Batool would ask to be dropped off at addresses in Luton and Milton Keynes to visit the twins, who she said were being looked after by her ex-husband’s family. She would also send them birthday cards and presents, and show Sharif photos, he claimed.
Batool only admitted the twins were fictitious in 2022, Sharif said, after he confronted her when he found a letter from her ex-husband begging to see his child.
The Guardian tracked down the man, who said Batool, whom he knew as Aysha Khan, had duped him into believing the children were real.
The 42-year-old, who gave his name as Khan even though his full name was heard in court, was jailed for six years in September 2015 for smuggling heroin with a street value of £200,000 in mini-footballs from Pakistan into the UK.
Khan, who was deported to Pakistan on his release, said he met Batool at a takeaway in Woking, Surrey, before the pair married in an Islamic ceremony in early 2014. She became pregnant with twins, but he never went to hospital appointments with her. Khan said Batool later claimed she had had a miscarriage.
Shortly before he was arrested in March 2015, Batool had said she was pregnant again. “When I got to prison, after 10 days, she said: ‘You’ve had a baby girl.’ I was so happy. I said: ‘Will you bring her?’ and she said: ‘I’m going to bring her in a little while.’ She came to see me one or two months later in Bedford prison and showed me pictures.”
Batool never brought the girl and later blocked Khan from contacting her. It prompted him to write her a letter asking to see his daughter. “But she was lying about everything. I felt very bad and confused,” he said.
Sharif claimed Batool had also been in a relationship with another Pakistani man, whom she was trying to sponsor to come to the UK. The court heard that Batool’s family disapproved of the relationship and said marrying him would bring shame on them. In November 2012, Batool told police that her family had held her against her will for three weeks and she and the man were placed in a refuge for victims of honour-based violence.
Sharif’s past relationships were also challenged in court. Sharif, who came to the UK from Pakistan on a student visa in 2003, denied attempting to orchestrate a sham marriage with a Polish woman to obtain an EU passport. “I wanted to settle down with a Polish girl,” he told jurors.
The court heard three Polish women, including Sara’s biological mother, Olga Domin, reported Sharif to Surrey police for holding them captive and threatening and controlling them. One of the women was alleged to have been under 18 at the start of their relationship, which Sharif denied.
Sharif conceded during cross-examination that he had been married to a cousin in Pakistan in an Islamic ceremony in 2011 while married to Domin. Batool was his third wife, he eventually accepted.
