The brutal murder of Sara Sharif, the 10-year-old British girl found dead in her family home in Woking, caused shock in the United Kingdom in the middle of summer. A day before police found her body on August 10, her father Urfan Sharif had left for Pakistan with his second wife, Beinash Batool, and her five other children, leaving her battered body behind. yes life of the girl.
A month after the tragic event, the Pakistani police broke into the grandparents’ house in the city of Jhelum and took custody of the five children, in collaboration with the British police, who consider Ufan Sharif and Beinash Batool as suspects. of the death of little Sara.
“I told Ufan and Beinash that they could go wherever they wanted, that the children would stay with me,” Muhamad Sharif, the deceased girl’s grandfather, told the BBC. “Since the children arrived from the United Kingdom, they were with me and I didn’t leave them anywhere. No one had asked me about them until the police broke into the house.”
Muhamad Sharif assured that the spectacular police operation, blocking the street with dozens of officers and violently assaulting the house, has left the children, who refused to leave their grandfather, “dismayed.” The grandfather, who initially stated that he had not been in contact with his fugitive son, has also accused the police of “illegally detaining” other family members.
Ufan Sharif and Beinash Batool are meanwhile missing. In a video released last week, the girl’s stepmother described Sara Sharif’s death as “an accident” and said she was willing to collaborate with her husband with the British authorities.
The two claimed to have gone into hiding since their arrival in Pakistan for fear of harassment and torture at the hands of the Jhelum police. Sara Sharif’s lifeless body was found in Woking on August 10 following an emergency call to the police made by her father as soon as she landed with the rest of the family in Islamabad.
Ufan Sharif was previously married to a British man, Olga, with whom he had Sara and another son. While the father and stepmother had fled with the rest of the family, Olga had to go through the tragic ordeal of identifying the body of her daughter.
“I could hardly recognize his face because of the wounds he had,” Olga confessed to British media. “One of her cheeks was completely swollen and the other side of her face was completely bruised. Even now, when I close my eyes, I still see, I have a hard time remembering what my daughter looked like.”
Olga separated from Ufan Sharif in 2015 and her daughter Sara and her older brother lived with her until 2019, when a family court awarded custody to the father. “They were happy children, despite the separation, and every time I called them they fought over who wanted to talk to me first,” recalls the mother. “Until the stepmother interfered and told me that they didn’t want to get on the phone and that they were insulting me.”