Sara Sharif’s family ‘hid in corn fields’ as police raided home in Pakistan

A police officer in Pakistan has described using “hard tactics” to find Sara Sharif’s fugitive family, while a relative said they hid in corn fields when police raided his home during the four-week hunt.

About 17 or 18 members of the wider family were interrogated and officers went undercover to get information about 10-year-old Sara’s father, Urfan Sharif, 42, stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, and uncle, Faisal Malik, 29, the Daily Mail reported.

It came after the trio fled to Pakistan with other children after Sara died at the family home in Woking, Surrey, on August 8 2023.

Sharif called police when he arrived in Islamabad and confessed he had beaten Sara up “too much”.

Officers went to his home and found Sara’s broken and battered body in a bunk bed, with a confession note from her father on the pillow.

On August 15, Nasir Mehmood Bajwa, the district police officer (DPO) for Jhelum in Pakistan, received an Interpol request “to search and locate the suspects”, before a further request came through within 24 hours for an “urgent safe-and-well check” on children, who were judged to be “at risk of significant harm” with the three adults, according to the Daily Mail.

Mr Mehmood Bajwa told the paper: “They (Sharif and Batool) murdered a girl, so we had to do more for the safety of the children.

“We employed hard tactics to ensure their safety.”

Officers were sent to the home of Muhammad Sharif, the father of Malik and Sharif, in the suburbs of Jhelum, but he told them he had not seen Sharif since 2010.

Imran Hussain, one of the officers in Pakistan, told the paper they went undercover, and he went to a salon near the Sharif family home and started asking questions.

He said: “We decided to use spies, people in civilian clothes.

“For that I went myself in plain clothes, on a motorbike.

“I saw a small salon in front of the Sharif family house. So I went there, got my beard shaved and got a haircut.

“I asked about Urfan, about his family. Then I asked if they had come to Pakistan recently and he said that they had.

“He mentioned that he had seen them just two days ago, and that they even came in to see him.”

Mr Mehmood Bajwa said they “interrogated” 17 or 18 family members and later the officers tracked down the children at a property in Jhelum.

Rasikh Munir, a relative of Urfan Sharif’s, told the BBC he hid Sara’s family for weeks during the international police hunt.

Police raided Mr Munir’s home in a small village in eastern Pakistan multiple times, but the family hid in corn fields, he said.

Mr Munir said he believed he had done nothing wrong in hiding the family.

He said he drove the family between his house in Sialkot and the city of Jhelum, where Sara’s grandfather lived, and took them to have haircuts and sometimes for ice cream.

Just over three weeks into the search, police found the children at Muhammad Sharif’s home, and Mr Munir said Sharif, Batool and Malik were hiding in a neighbouring house metres away.

Mr Munir added that the loss of the children and the police pressure prompted the three to return to the UK.

Pressed on whether he felt he had done anything wrong, he told the BBC: “I helped Urfan and the young children. If I hadn’t helped them, they would have been completely helpless. I helped them to look after the kids, I felt sympathy for them.

“They were my people. Had I not stood by them and something bad had happened to them who would have been responsible for them?”

The defendants returned to the UK on September 13 2023 – leaving behind the children who had travelled with them – and were detained within minutes of a flight touching down at Gatwick airport.

On Wednesday Sharif and Batool were found guilty of Sara’s murder.

Malik, who lived with them, was convicted of causing or allowing her death after a jury at the Old Bailey deliberated for nine hours and 46 minutes.

Mr Justice Cavanagh adjourned sentencing until next Tuesday.