LONDON: A British court on Thursday upheld lengthy jail terms handed to the parents and uncle imprisoned for killing UK-Pakistani girl Sara Sharif after subjecting her to years of abuse.
The father of 10-year-old Sara Sharif, Urfan Sharif, her stepmother, Beinash Batool, and her uncle, all lost appeal bids to reduce their sentences. The court also refused a plea by the solicitor general’s office to impose a stiffer whole life sentence on Sharif.
The trial of Urfan Sharif and his wife Beinash Batool caused waves of revulsion in the UK as the horrific abuse suffered by the 10-year-old girl was revealed in a London court.
There was anger too at how the bright, bubbly youngster had been failed by all the authorities supposed to be in charge of her care.
London’s Old Bailey court heard that her body was found in her bed in August 2023 covered in bites and bruises with broken bones and burns inflicted by an electric iron and boiling water.
Passing sentence in December after the trial, judge John Cavanagh said Sara had been subjected to “acts of extreme cruelty” but that Sharif and Batool had not shown “a shred of remorse”.
They had treated Sara as “worthless” and as “a skivvy”, because she was a girl. And because she was not Batool’s natural child, the stepmother had failed to protect her, he said.
“This poor child was battered with great force again and again.”
Sara’s father, 43, was sentenced to 40 years in prison while her stepmother, 30, was ordered to remain in jail for at least 33 years.