ISLAMABAD: Police in Pakistan have constituted a special team to find and arrest the father, stepmother and uncle of a 10-year-old girl who was found dead in the United Kingdom on August 10, officials said on Wednesday.
Sara Sharif was found dead at her home in Woking on the southern outskirts of London after police were called from Pakistan by her father, Urfan Sharif. Urfan Sharif, 41, his partner Beinash Batool, 29, and his 28-year-old brother Faisal Malik are wanted for questioning over Sharif’s death.
The day before Sharif’s body was discovered, police believe the three suspects traveled to Islamabad with five children aged between one and 13. An autopsy did not establish a cause of death but did show that Sharif had “multiple and extensive injuries, which are likely to have been caused over a sustained and extended period of time,” a UK police statement said.
Urfan and his family come from a small village, Kari Janjeel, in Jhelum.
“We have constituted a special team to arrest the suspects, but so far there are no leads in this case,” Inspector Mudassar Khan, a spokesperson for Jhelum Police, told Arab News.
He confirmed that Urfan, along with his partner and brother, had arrived in Jhelum from the UK, but “they all are in hiding now.”
“We cannot say anything about the case unless we arrest the suspects and investigate them,” he said, adding that police were looking for leads.
This is a photo issued by Surrey Police on August 18, 2023 of Sara Sharif. (Surrey Police via AP)
Khan said police had called Urfan’s brother, Imran Sharif, for questioning who said he did not know about his whereabouts and he might have gone to Mirpur in Azad Kashmir where his in-laws live. Imran is not a suspect in the case.
Jhelum police have also tried to trace Urfan and his wife in Mirpur through local officials, but in vain:
“We have been trying our best to locate the suspects as early as possible and we have been utilising all available resources for it,” Khan said.
The deceased Sara Sharif’s mother, Olga Sharif, told the UK press she married Urfan, 41, in November 2009, but the marriage ended in 2017. Her ex-husband was awarded full custody of both Sara and her 13-year-old brother in 2019. Since then, Sharif claims she has only been allowed to see her children twice.
Following the investigation into Sara Sharif’s murder, Inspector Nisar Ahmed and his team went to Urfan’s native village of Kari Janjeel but learned the family left in the 1990s and never returned.
“Urfan’s brother lives in Jhelum city now and the police have been questioning him to get any evidence or clue in the case,” Ahmed told Arab News over the phone.
“This case doesn’t lie in our jurisdiction, therefore we have stopped following it.”
