Sara Sharif’s father has confessed to killing the 10-year-old but insisted he did not mean to “harm” her when he bound and beat her with a cricket bat.
Taxi driver Urfan Sharif, 42, had sought to blame Sara’s stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, for a catalogue of injuries, claiming he was out at work when his daughter was being abused.
But on the seventh day of his evidence at the Old Bailey, he told jurors he took “full responsibility” for what happened.
He went on to admit hitting Sara with a cricket bat and pole, binding her with tape, breaking her neck, and battering her over the head with a mobile phone.
Sharif admitted that he tightened his hands around his daughter’s neck on more than one occasion but denied he had used his Marks and Spencer belt to throttle her.
He denied burning her buttocks with an iron and biting her arm, the Old Bailey heard.
On Wednesday morning, Batool sobbed uncontrollably in the dock as Sharif told jurors: “I accept every single thing.”
Sharif initially asked for the charges against him to be put to him again but after a lunchbreak appeared to change his mind and insisted he was not guilty of murder.
Defence barrister Caroline Carberry KC, for Batool, asserted: “When you confirmed earlier today you beat her to death and you intended to cause her really serious harm that was an admission to the offence of murder.”
Sharif said: “I did not want to hurt her. I didn’t want to harm her.”
Ms Carberry responded: “But you did harm her. What did you intend when you took a cricket bat to a 10-year-old girl?”
The defendant said: “I did wrong. I didn’t think anything.”
Ms Carberry asked: “Do you accept that you killed her?”
Sobbing, Sharif said: “She died because of me. I didn’t want to kill her.”
Sara was found dead in a bunkbed at the family home in Woking, Surrey, last August 10, the day after the defendants fled to Pakistan.
Sharif had phoned police on arrival at Islamabad and admitted he had beaten Sara “too much”, having left a written confession beside her body.
It was alleged that Sara suffered years-long violent abuse, which involved the use of a homemade hood and being tied up with packaging tape.
A post-mortem examination found she had suffered dozens of injuries including 25 broken bones, human bite marks, and burns on her bottom and feet.
At the start of the day, Ms Carberry had asked Sharif about the note he left beside the body of his daughter before leaving for Pakistan.
In it he wrote “love you Sara” on the first page followed by the words: “Whoever see this note it’s me Urfan Sharif who killed my daughter by beating.”
Ms Carberry asked if he did indeed kill his daughter by beating and Sharif replied: “Yes, she died because of me.”
The barrister said: “In the weeks before she died she suffered multiple fractures to her body, didn’t she, and it was you who inflicted those injuries?”
The defendant replied: “Yes.”
Asked if he broke Sara’s hyoid neck bone, Sharif said: “I can take full responsibility. I accept every single thing.”
Ms Carberry went on: “I suggest on the night of the 6th August you badly beat Sara.”
I accept everything
Speaking barely above a whisper in the witness box, Sharif replied: “I accept everything.”
Ms Carberry went on: “Do you accept the post-mortem evidence that those fractures – at least 25 in number – were caused by you during assaults with a weapon?”
She asked what Sara had done, in his mind, to deserve such treatment, saying: “Were you angry with her because in the summer of last year she had started soiling herself? And she had started vomiting, hadn’t she?
“And when you hit her severely and repeatedly with the cricket bat you intended to hurt her didn’t you? And you knew that by hitting her in the way that you did you weren’t just going to cause a little bruise to her body. You hit her intending to cause her really serious harm.”
The defendant agreed.
Previously, Sharif had put the blame on Batool, saying she was the only candidate in the house who could have hurt his daughter.
He had denied the accusation by Ms Carberry that he was a “lying, manipulative and controlling man”.
Sharid, Batool, and Sara’s uncle, Faisal Malik, 29, formerly of Hammond Road, Woking, Surrey, deny murder and causing or allowing Sara’s death and the trial continues.
