Sara Sharif starved and strangled until her neck broke in weeks before her death

Sara Sharif had been strangled until her neck broke, and was left with a broken bone for weeks before she died, a court heard today.

It also appeared the 10-year-old girl, who was found dead in her Woking home, had been left to starve, with no food, a pathologist told the Old Bailey today.

Sara’s father Urfan Sharif, 42, is on trial at the Old Bailey accused of his daughter’s murder, alongside Sara’s stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, and uncle, Faisal Malik, 29.

This week the court has heard distressing details of the abuse Sara allegedly suffered in the years leading up to her death.

Jurors were told she had suffered more than 70 injuries, shortly before she was found dead in her home in a bunk bed on August 10 last year.

A pathologist, bone specialist Professor Anthony Freemont, told the court he had concluded the break in her neck had been caused “within the setting of neck compression” of which “the most common cause of these types of fractures is manual strangulation”.

He said that, according to his analysis, this injury was between six to 12 weeks old at the time of Sara’s death.

Professor Freemont said the two fractures in the girl’s fingers had occurred between 12 and 18 days before her death, based on his analysis of the stage of healing the injuries were at.

Of the injuries he examined, Professor Freemont said: “If you find fractures of different ages and different bones, there is a high likelihood they are non-accidental injuries.”

Listen to Sara Sharif's father's 999 call in full

The pathologist went on to say that the bone marrow he examined from Sara’s body showed changes which could have been caused by starvation or “the rapid removal of all food”.

The previous day, jurors heard that another pathologist who carried out a post-mortem examination on Sara’s body gave the girl’s cause of death as “complications arising from multiple injuries and neglect”.

Police found Sara’s body in a bunk bed in her home, following a call from Sharif in Pakistan saying he “beat her up too much” for being “naughty”, the court has heard.

It is alleged Sara had died two days before and the defendants had booked flights out of the country within hours of her death.

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

The trial continues.

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