Fugitive father of ‘murdered’ Sara Sharif will be caught today, claims Pakistani police

LONDON/ISLAMABAD: Pakistani police are expected to track down and arrest a British father on the run today after his 10-year-old daughter was found dead at home – as her grandfather pleads for his fugitive son to hand himself in.

Urfan Sharif, 41, his wife Beinash Batool, 29, and his brother Faisal Malik, 28, fled the UK a day before Sara Sharif’s body was found in Woking earlier this month.

Surrey Police, who have launched an international manhunt for the trio, said they are wanted for questioning over the murder of Sara.

Last night a senior officer said they were closing in on the group as they continue the hunt around the family’s hometown of Jhelum.

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It comes as the Mail on Sunday revealed that Pakistani police are tracking a mobile phone SIM card belonging to a British father.

Nasir Bajwa, the police chief leading the case, said: ‘With God’s will we will make the arrest by tomorrow night.’

He told the Sunday Mirror that his team of officers working on the harrowing case are finding it difficult as ‘a little child has met a brutal death’.

Meanwhile, Sharif’s father, Muhammad Sharif, 68, urged his son to cooperate with police officers. He also revealed his son did not tell him of Sara’s death when he briefly visited their family home in the Punjab province.

‘We want them to present themselves,’ he told the Sunday Times. ‘We want to resolve the matter as the privacy of our house is affected due to frequent police raids.’

The concerned grandfather added that two other relatives in the country had been interrogated over the whereabouts of the three adults.

Taxi-driver Sharif and Batool, as well as Malik – who was living in the UK on a student visa – bought one-way tickets to Pakistan worth £5,000 before fleeing.

Accompanying them were five children, aged between a year and 13.

Surrey Police said Sharif called them by dialling 999 from Pakistan, which led detectives to make the grim discovery at the family council house in the early hours of August 10.

Yesterday, their Pakistani counterparts revealed they are closing in on Sharif, Batool and Malik, after they identified an active Pakistani SIM card registered in Sharif’s name.

The SIM has recently been used by someone in the sprawling city of Jhelum, which lies about 70 miles from the capital Islamabad.

Khurram Ali, a senior police official in Rawalpindi, who is leading the country-wide manhunt for the three, said: ‘We have traced a mobile phone SIM card which is registered under the name of Urfan Sharif and is being actively used by someone in Jhelum.’

Police believe Sharif, Batool and Malik may be hiding in Jhelum, possibly being aided by their relatives.

Nasir Bajwa, the district police chief in Jhelum, said last night that he was confident his force would catch the three soon.

He added: ‘We are coordinating operations at various places in and outside Jhelum, and will soon get him.’

Surrey Police said that a post-mortem examination on Sara’s body could not establish the cause of death.

But it revealed the little girl had suffered ‘multiple and extensive injuries’ which were ‘likely to have been caused over a sustained and extended period of time’.

As a result, the police have widened their investigation and are now appealing to the public to piece together her life in the months and days leading up to her death.

Relatives of Sharif revealed that he has married three times, first to a cousin in Pakistan.

But after he arrived in the UK on a student visa around 15 years ago, he divorced his first wife, and married Sara’s mother, Polish national Olga Domin, 36, with whom he also had an elder son, aged 13.

After divorcing Olga, he then married Beinash, who was born in Luton. They have had three children together.