The 10-year-old was found dead at her home in Woking by police on 10 August following a 999 call made from Pakistan by a man identifying himself as Sara’s father, Urfan Sharif.
The taxi driver left a note by Sara’s fully-clothed body, saying: “I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost it.”
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Urfan Sharif, 42, Sara’s stepmother, Beinash Batool, 30, and her paternal uncle Faisal Malik, 28, are accused of carrying out a violent “campaign of abuse” before killing her on 8 August.
All three defendants have pleaded not guilty to murder and to causing or allowing the death of a child between 16 December 2022 and 9 August 2023.
An trial at London’s Old Bailey, which is expected to continue until 13 December, heard that Sara “suffered dreadfully” and was burned with an iron, bitten and had a plastic bag taped over head in the months leading up to her death.
The court was told that teachers at her school reported seeing her with bruises on three occasions.
On 10 March 2023, the second incident, Sara’s teacher, Helen Simmons, asked the schoolgirl about the two bruises on her face.
Prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC described Sara as acting “coy” when asked by teachers and giving “multiple conflicting stories” about how she sustained the injuries.
The school agreed that a referral to social services should be made due to Sara’s injuries, however, she was withdrawn from school three weeks later after Batool was asked about another bruise sustained by the child on 28 March, almost five months before her death.
The court also heard suggestions that Sara had begun wearing a hijab in January last year “to conceal her injuries”.
At the launch of a safeguarding review into Sara’s death in October last year, Surrey County Council confirmed that she was “known” to the local authority prior to her death but said it could not comment further.
