Sara Sharif’s stepmother told sisters about violence in WhatsApps, court hears

Sara Sharif’s stepmother told her sisters about violence against the 10-year-old spanning at least two years before her death, saying “something happens to Sara I will not be able to forgive myself”, a court has heard.

Beinash Batool had blamed her husband Urfan Sharif for beating the 10-year-old “black” in a series of WhatsApp messages dating back to 2019, the Old Bailey was told.

But the prosecution alleged Batool, 30, minicab driver Sharif, 42, and his brother Faisal Malik, 29, all played a part in Sara’s death after being hooded, restrained, burned, bitten and hit with a belt buckle and pole.

I feel really sorry for Sara, poor girl can’t walk. I really want to report him

Prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC said the messages Batool sent to her sisters showed “all was not well” in the household and cast Sharif as an “angry parent”.

In May 2021, she messaged her sister: “Urfan beat the crap out of Sara. She’s covered in bruises, literally beaten black.

“I feel really sorry for Sara, poor girl can’t walk. I really want to report him.”

Mr Emlyn Jones told jurors: “As a minimum, it shows that Sara was being hurt and injured as long ago as spring of 2021 – so that is more than two years before her death – and that Beinash Batool was aware and even on her version of events, she didn’t stop it.”

In February 2022, the court heard she told another sister that Sharif was “beating Sara up … ‘cos she’s being naughty”.

She said that Sara had “anxiety” and vomited whatever she ate, adding: “Urfan’s behaviour makes her do it more.”

Then she told her sister: “Something happens to Sara I will not be able to forgive myself.”

In the summer of 2022, the court heard Bartool complained that she could not cover up the bruises, saying: “He beat Sara up yesterday and I can’t send her to school on Monday looking like that.”

Sara was taken out of school in April 2023 and died four months later.

Mr Emlyn Jones told jurors: “These messages are only one small part of the overall picture.

“It is the prosecution’s case that Sara’s death was caused by the combined actions of all three adults in the house; for the systematic, if not daily then certainly frequent assault and abuse of that little girl could not have been done without the participation, assistance and encouragement of them all.

“Keeping it from the outside world is just one small aspect of that. It would be no surprise, the prosecution suggest, if Beinash Batool presented only a partial picture of the truth to members of her own family.”

The defendants, of Hammond Road in Woking , have denied Sara’s murder and causing or allowing the death of a child between December 16 2022 and August 9 2023.

The Old Bailey trial continues.

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