Gerrard Kaonga
A father made a chilling phone call to police after allegedly beating his daughter to death and fleeing the country.
Taxi driver Urfan Sharif, 42, is currently on trial in the UK and is accused of murdering his 10-year-old daughter Sara Sharif.
He is accused alongside Sara’s stepmother, Beinash Batool, 30, and Sara's uncle, Faisal Malik, 29.
The trial opened on October 14 and revealed the gruesome details related to the case.
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Prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC said all three defendants had played a part in a 'campaign of abuse' against Sara leading to her death.
Urfan had initially confessed to police that he had killed the child on August 10, 2023.
Jones said that police had found Sara’s body in a bunk bed in her home in Woking, UK, after a call from Urfan, who was already in Pakistan at this time.
During the eight-and-a-half minute call, he told the operator: “I’ve killed my daughter.”
He was crying so much the operator had to ask him to take a deep breath and explain what had happened.
He continued: “I legally punished her, and she died. She was naughty.
“I beat her up, it wasn’t my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much.”
However, according to Jones, the post-mortem examination showed that the child had suffered significantly more injuries than one beating.
The 10-year-old had dozens of injuries including 'probable human bite marks', a burn from an iron and scald burns from hot water before her death.
Jurors were also told she was beaten with objects and had suffered damage to the brain.
Jones said an examination of her body revealed that Sharif’s claim to have beaten up his daughter came ‘nowhere near to describing the extent of the violence and physical abuse Sara had suffered’ over a period of weeks.
He added: “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.”
When the police did discover the body, they also found a note written in Urfan’s handwriting.
The note allegedly stated: “It’s me Urfan Sharif who killed my daughter by beating.
“I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost it.
“I am running away because I am scared.”
Jones also noted that all three of the accused are now blaming one another for the death of Sara and the abuse she suffered.
Jones said: “Each of them denies that they were the one responsible for any of that violence and abuse.
“Each of them seeks to deflect the blame onto one or both of the others, to shift responsibility away from themselves, onto someone else."
The defendants have denied murder and causing or allowing the death of a child between December 16 2022 and August 9 2023.
The trial before Mr Justice Cavanagh is due to go on until December 13.