Daily Times

The British-Pakistani father of a 10-year-old girl found dead at her home in England last month was on a plane back to the United Kingdom with his partner and brother, Pakistan police said on Wednesday, after the trio went on the run for weeks.

Rawalpindi Regional Police Officer Syed Khurram Ali confirmed the development. “We can confirm the three suspects in the case boarded a flight earlier and are on their way to the UK,” police spokesman Mudassar Khan told AFP, adding that they had voluntarily gone with the knowledge of authorities. “I confirm that they have not been arrested but they left voluntarily,” Raja Haq Nawaz, a lawyer for Urfan Sharif’s father Mohammad Sharif in Pakistan, also told AFP. He said the three were on a flight that left from the Punjabi city of Sialkot.

Sara Sharif was found dead in the southern UK town of Woking on August 10 and a post-mortem test revealed she had suffered “multiple and extensive injuries” over a sustained period, British police said last month.

British police had previously said that Sara’s father Urfan Sharif, 41, his partner Beinash Batool, 29, and his brother Faisal Malik, 28, fled to Pakistan to take refuge with relatives before the girl’s body was found, sparking an international manhunt. The trio, along with five children, flew from the UK to Pakistan a day after Sara died. Police believed the trio left the country on Aug 9, a day before Sara’s body was discovered, and that they spent up to 5,000 pounds on one-way tickets to Pakistan for three adults and five children. On Tuesday, the five British-Pakistani children brought to Pakistan were taken into the custody of state protective services. The children were found at Sharif’s father’s house in Jhelum after police received information that the couple were hiding there.

Urfan and Batool said last week they were prepared to cooperate with UK authorities. “Sara’s death was an incident. Our family in Pakistan are severely affected by all that is going on,” Batool said in a video shared with AFP by her relatives.