London: The mother and grandmother of British schoolgirl Sara Sharif have said they barely recognized her body at a mortuary due to the severity of her injuries.
The 10-year-old was found at her home in Woking, Surrey, where she lived with her father, Urfan Sharif, her stepmother Beinash Batool, and five siblings, all of whom fled to Pakistan along with her uncle, Faisal Malik on Aug. 9, the day before her body was found following a phone call from her father to police in the UK from Islamabad.
The three adults are wanted for questioning in connection with the death, which is being treated as murder after a postmortem found Sara suffered “multiple and extensive injuries” over a “sustained and extended” period of time.
Urfan, 41, Batool, 29, currently in hiding in the country, sent a video to broadcasters including the BBC and Sky News this week in which they offered to cooperate with authorities and claimed Sara’s death was “an incident.”
Batool, contradicting an earlier claim by another of Urfan’s brothers that Sara had fallen down the stairs and broken her neck, said in the video: “Sara’s death was an incident. Our family in Pakistan are severely affected by all that is going on.
“All of our family members have gone into hiding as everyone is scared for their safety. The kids are unable to attend school as they’re afraid to leave the house,” she said.
“No one is leaving the house, the groceries have run out and there is no food for the kids as the adults are unable to leave their homes out of fear of safety.”
She added: “That is why we have gone into hiding. Lastly, we are willing to cooperate with the UK authorities and fight our case in court.”
Urfan, Batool and Malik are currently at the center of an international manhunt, involving police in the UK, Pakistan and organizations including Interpol.
Urfan’s father, Muhammad Sharif, previously told the BBC that his granddaughter’s death was an “accident” and that while the family had left the UK out of “fear,” all would eventually return and cooperate with police.
In an interview with Polish broadcaster TVN’s “Uwaga!” program, Olga Sharif, Sara’s mother, said she had difficulty recognizing her daughter.
“One of her cheeks was swollen and the other side was bruised. Even now, when I close my eyes, I can see what my baby looked like,” she said.
Olga, a Polish national now living in the UK, added that she separated from Urfan in 2015, but a family court decided in 2019 that Sara and her older brother should live with their father. After a period of contact, Batool prevented her from visiting them.
“Their stepmother wrote to me not to come anymore because the children did not want to see me,” she told TVN. “It’s not normal that once the children were happy and arguing about who would talk to mum first, and then the kids don’t even want to talk to me on the phone and are calling me the worst names.”
She previously criticized claims Sara’s death could have been an accident, adding that “life will never be the same” without her daughter.
Sara’s grandmother, Sylwia Kurz, told the BBC separately that Olga now wanted to be reunited with her son.
“Olga would very much like to have him so that he can be with her. She would like to get her son back, as we all would,” she said. “My grandson is 13 years old, after all, so he must have known why Sara didn’t fly with them.”
