Jury shown video of father slapping girl
Surrey Police
A video showing the father of Sara Sharif slapping his daughter less than 13 months before she died of multiple injuries has been shown to jurors.
In the home video filmed in July 2022 Urfan Sharif is seen sitting on a bed playing with a new born baby and Sara, who already has a mark on her cheek.
He slaps her and she continues smiling, then he slaps her three more times until she says “Hey!”
Mr Sharif, 42, along with Sara’s stepmother, Beinash Batool, 30, and uncle, Faisal Malik, 29, have denied both murder and causing or allowing her death of the ten-year-old at their trial at the Old Bailey.
Sara’s body was discovered in a bunkbed at her home in Woking, Surrey, on 10 August 2023.
Jurors previously heard she had been hooded, burned, bitten and beaten during more than two years of abuse.
The jury was told that the video was filmed two days after the baby was born.
Sara was smiling and had an mark on her cheek with cream on it. Ms Batool’s barrister Caroline Carberry KC said it was Sudocrem.
Sara was saying to the baby “Come to me” when her father slaps on the cheek with the mark on it.
She continues smiling, and her father slaps her at least three more times. At the end Sara says “Hey!”, and then the video stops.
Surrey Police
Urfan Sharif, Beinash Batool and Faisal Malik are each facing two charges relating to the death of Sara Sharif
Mr Sharif smiled as the video was played in court.
Ms Carberry KC asked: “Did you find that funny?”
He said: “I have not seen my daughter for a long time.”
Asked why he slapped his daughter he said: “This is not slap ma’am.”
“Why did you slap her face at all?” Ms Carberry KC asked.
“This not slap. You can she how happy she was with me.
“I was saying coochie, coochie, coochie.”
Ms Carberry said: “She didn’t even flinch at all because she’s so used to it.”
The court also heard how Sara shouted at her father to “go away” during supervised contact when she was a toddler.
She shouted at Mr Sharif in 2015 when she was not living with him, according to notes from a social worker who observed the contact.
Mr Sharif told Ms Carberry KC that the social worker’s notes were not true.
“She was not even talking at that time,” he said.
“She started talking at the age of three.”
Surrey Police
Urfan Sharif, seen here when he was arrested at Gatwick Airport, said claims he threatened to kill former partners were “false allegations”
Ms Carberry KC also went through a list of allegations made against Mr Sharif – that he falsely imprisoned an 18-year-old woman, that he hit his first wife in the mouth and made it bleed, that he kicked her and threatened to kill her and swore all the time.
He denied all the allegations, saying the social worker records were false.
Ms Carberry KC said he also only attended four out of 10 sessions of a “parenting puzzle” course.
Mr Sharif agreed that when he met Ms Batool he was 32 or 33 and she was 20, and that it was a casual relationship at first.
Ms Carberry KC said Ms Batool was a “vulnerable young woman”, isolated from her family and struggling.
Mr Sharif said: “She is anything but vulnerable.”
Ms Carberry KC asked him: “Do you remember cutting her clothes with scissors?”
“No ma’am,” Mr Sharif said. “She’s a psycho. That is her thing.”
“She’s a psycho and is obsessed with cutting clothes.”
‘As her own’
The court heard that he had told social services that they were “a perfect couple”.
Guildford Family Court later ordered Mr Sharif to attend a Domestic Violence Perpetrator Programme.
He attended 10 out of the 16 sessions, the court heard.
The jury heard that in 2019 Sara was living with her mother Olga Sharif, but then made allegations of neglect and violence against her.
She said her mother was smoking cannabis, not feeding her, leaving her alone with another child and burning her with a lighter.
Mr Sharif recorded the allegations in a video.
This led to a court order that Sara should live with her father and his new wife, Ms Batool.
Caroline Carberry KC said: “She treated [her] as her own.”
“That’s what I thought,” Mr Sharif replied.
“[She] seemed to love Beinash more than [she] loved you?” he was asked.
“That’s right ma’am,” he said.
The trial continues.
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