Sara Sharif’s father has confessed to killing the 10-year-old but insisted he did not mean to “harm” her, even when he whacked her with a metal pole as she lay dying.
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.
On the seventh day of his evidence at the Old Bailey, he told jurors he took “full responsibility” for what happened but did not intend to hurt his daughter.
He went on to admit hitting Sara with a cricket bat as she was bound with packaging tape.
He repeatedly throttled her with his bare hands, breaking the hyoid bone in her neck, and battered her over the head with a mobile phone, he said.
He denied burning her buttocks with an iron, biting her arm or tightening a belt around her neck, the Old Bailey heard.
But even as Sara lay collapsed and dying in Batool’s lap last August 8, he continued the years-long campaign of abuse, jurors were told.
Screen grab from body cam footage of the moment police officers boarded a plane and detained Urfan Sharif and Beinash Batool (Surrey Police/PA)
That day, Sharif admitted he armed himself with a pole after being called home by Batool.
Defence barrister Caroline Carberry KC, for Batool, said: “When you went into the room it was clear Sara needed medical help.
“You said to Beinash that Sara was just pretending that she was just acting up.
“And you took the metal pole that you had taken upstairs and you gave her a couple of whacks with it on her abdomen, while she was lying there very unwell.”
Sharif agreed and wept in the witness box.
Ms Carberry said he had refused Batool’s plea to call for an ambulance, adding: “It was really clear Sara was really, really unwell and, as we now know, dying.”
Sharif said: “I remember I was crying for my daughter to wake up. I could not believe she passed away.”
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 on a pillow beside her body.
A post-mortem examination found she had suffered dozens of injuries including at least 25 broken bones, human bite marks, and burns on her bottom and feet.
The defendants were arrested on a plane at Gatwick Airport when they returned to the UK last September 13.
Earlier on Wednesday, Batool had sobbed uncontrollably in the dock as Sharif told jurors he took “full responsibility” for Sara’s death.
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.”
A note left beside the body of Sara Sharif (Surrey Police/PA)
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.”
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.
Sharif asked for the murder charge against him to be put to him again but after a lunchbreak appeared to change his mind and insisted he was not guilty.
He told jurors: “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?”
Sharif said: “She died because of me. I didn’t want to kill her.”
Concluding her cross-examination, Ms Carberry asked Sharif if he had been telling the truth when he confessed to killing Sara in his phone call to the police and in the note on her pillow.
“When you told the police in that call that you ‘beat her up too much’ you were telling the truth.”
Sharif replied: “Yes.”
Sharif, 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.