Father’s note left under Sara Sharif’s pillow admitting he killed her ‘by beating’ pictured

A handwritten note in which Sara Sharif’s father admitted killing his 10-year-old daughter “by beating” has been shown to jurors.

Warning: This story contains details readers may find distressing

Minicab driver Urfan Sharif, 42, is on trial at the Old Bailey along with Sara’s stepmother, Beinash Batool, 30, and uncle, Faisal Malik, 29, where they deny murder and causing or allowing the death of a child.

In an eight-and-a-half minute phone call to police in the early hours of 10 August last year, after fleeing to Pakistan with the rest of his family, Sharif sobbed as he said: “I’m a cruel father” and “I’ve killed my daughter”.

“I legally punished her, and she died,” he said in the call played in court, telling the operator “she was naughty”.

“My daughter’s dead. I panicked and left home… I beat her up, it wasn’t my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much.”

Jurors were shown body-worn camera footage of the moment a police officer entered their “clean” house in Woking, Surrey, before finding Sara’s body.

In an upstairs bedroom, there was a fan, which was switched on, pointing at the bottom bunk bed with a “perfectly” placed sheet on top of a human figure, he said.

“I pulled back the cover and underneath was the body of a 10-year-old girl,” he said. “She was lying on the bed on her back with her arms by her side, legs together.”

There was bruising on her face and little finger, while a note in Sharif’s handwriting was tucked under one of the pillows by her head, the court heard.

On the first page he had written “Love you Sara”, while the second said: “Whoever see this note it’s me Urfan Sharif who killed my daughter by beating. I am running away because I am scared but I promise that I will hand over myself and take punishment.

“I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her but I lost it. My daughter is Muslim. Can you burry (sic) her like Muslim may be. I will be back before you finish the post-mortem.”

The court has heard Sara suffered dozens of injuries, including bruising, burns and broken bones in a “brutal” campaign of abuse in the weeks leading up to her death on 8 August last year.

She began to wear a hijab to hide her injuries to her face and head from the outside world as she was beaten with objects, strangled, tied up, burnt with an iron and bitten, the jury was told.

Prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC said jurors may get a better sense of how the wounds were inflicted as he outlined the potential weapons found by police in a search of the home.

A length of black rope with strands of Sara’s hair stuck on it, a rolling pin and a plastic-coated metal pole or baton, were all found in a small brick outhouse, while a cricket bat stained with blood matching Sara’s DNA was leaning outside.

In bins to the side of the house, officers found a filthy nappy with a match to Sara’s DNA, and “strange looking objects” made of bits of plastic bag wrapped up with parcel tape, some stained with blood or clumps of hairs.

Mr Emlyn Jones described them as “homemade hoods”, adding: “They had been placed over Sara’s head, we suggest and then taped in place.”

Batool’s Amazon shopping history showed she had bought 18 rolls of parcel tape in July alone, the jury was told.

The prosecutor said one neighbour heard a “single high-pitched scream” two days before Sara’s death, which lasted a couple of seconds and stopped suddenly.

‘Gut-wrenching screams’ heard by neighbour

“It sounded to her like the scream of someone in pain and as she put it, ‘It didn’t sound good’,” Mr Emlyn Jones told the jury.

A neighbour at the family’s previous address said she had heard banging and rattling along with the sounds of a child crying or screaming, followed by a “deathly quiet” silence, the court heard.

Another said she would hear children screaming and a woman shouting: “Shut the f*** up” and “go to your room you f***ing bastard,” the prosecutor said.

She would also hear “shockingly loud” sounds of smacking followed by “gut-wrenching screams”, the court heard, and said Sara’s responsibilities included taking out the bins every week and hanging out the washing.

Batool told her sisters about the violence her stepdaughter suffered for more than two years before her death, the court heard.

In May 2021, she said in a message: “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.”

In another she said: “Something happens to Sara I will not be able to forgive myself.”

All three defendants are said to have played their part in the violence and mistreatment that resulted in Sara’s death before flying to Pakistan the following day.

The jury was told Sharif will claim he made a “false confession” to protect his wife, who will say he was a “violent disciplinarian” who she was afraid of.

Malik, who worked part-time at McDonald’s, is expected to say he was not aware of the abuse.

The trial continues.