Sara Sharif – the 10-year-old girl found dead at her home in Woking – was previously known to authorities, Surrey County Council has said.
Sara was found dead on 10 August, with a post-mortem revealing she had “suffered multiple and extensive injuries”, which were “likely to have been caused over a sustained and extended period of time”.
Police in the UK have identified her father, Urfan Sharif, his partner, Beinash Batool, and Mr Sharif’s brother, Faisal Shahzad Malik, as people they want to speak to as part of a murder investigation.
On Sunday, Surrey County Council said Sara was known to the authority before her death.
“We cannot comment further while the Surrey Safeguarding Children Partnership’s thorough review process is ongoing,” a spokesperson for the authority said.
The council said it was “working tirelessly with our safeguarding partners to gain a full understanding of the situation as quickly as possible”.
On Friday, council leader Tim Oliver said: “This is an incredibly sad situation and our thoughts and deepest condolences are with everyone affected.”
He said the national Child Safeguarding panel had been notified of the death and a multi-agency rapid review was under way, in line with standard process following the death of a child.
He explained: “This rapid review will determine whether a local child safeguarding practice review (LCSPR) is to be undertaken by the Surrey Safeguarding Children Partnership.
Image: Sara Sharif. Pic: AP
“An LCSPR is a statutory process, bringing together partners including the police, health, social care and education to review practice of all agencies involved, organisational structures and learning.”
It comes after police in eastern Pakistan said they were seeking to arrest Mr Sharif in connection with Sara’s death.
Read more: Police in Pakistan seeking to arrest Sara’s father Trio booked flights to Pakistan a day before body found
According to authorities, Mr Sharif travelled to Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, with Ms Batool and Mr Malik on 9 August – the day before Sara’s body was found.
Mr Sharif’s family home is in Jhelum, Punjab, around 84 miles from the capital.
Image: Mr Sharif’s family home is 84 miles from Islamabad
Officer Imran Ahmed said police found evidence that Mr Sharif briefly returned to Jhelum, before leaving and going into hiding.
Another officer in Jhelum, Nisar Ahmed, said he and his men visited the village of Kari – where Mr Sharif was born – but learned the family left around 20 years ago and never returned.
There is no formal extradition treaty between the UK and Pakistan.
However, Pakistan has transferred people to the UK in the past, including Piran Ditta Khan, who was extradited to the UK in April in connection with the 2005 killing of PC Sharon Beshenivsky.
Image: Urfan Sharif, left and Beinash Batool. Pic: AP
The cause of Sara’s death is “still to be established”.
According to UK police, Mr Sharif called 999 from Islamabad on 10 August, expressing a concern for his eldest daughter’s safety – although the exact details of the conversation are unknown.
Sky News has seen the passports and holding plane tickets for Mr Sharif, Ms Batool and Mr Malik.
Image: Surrey Police officers outside the property
Eight tickets in total were booked by Sara’s father.
These were for three adults and five children – and paid for by his brother Mr Malik at a cost of around £5,100, according to a travel agent that sold the tickets.
Officers from Surrey Police have remained at the family’s property in Hammond Road in Horsell, a village less than a mile north of Woking town centre.
The government wanted this year’s A-level results to mark a return to normality after education years blighted by COVID.
Barring a few percentage points either way, they’ve got what they wanted. The statistics are broadly back to where they were in 2019 before the pandemic.
True, the number of A* and A grades was down but the high marks awarded during the teacher assessment years now look like the real anomaly.
A total of 414,940 applicants have got a place at university, four out of five of them at their first choice university.
Ministers and university vice-chancellors have been quick to congratulate those who fell short as well, pointing out that there are plenty of places in clearing, though many times more on traditional university courses than in apprenticeships. So far so familiar.
It would be a mistake however to think that there is not much to see here.
The British university sector is in turmoil and there are a growing number of reasons why school leavers should ask themselves whether it is worth going to university at all.
The government certainly wants you to think twice. Education Secretary Gillian Keegan gushed warm words on results day – she likes to point to her own experience of gaining a degree on day release while working as an apprentice.
The universities minister, Robert Halfon, who no longer has the “U” word in his title, takes the view that a “worthwhile” degree is one that results directly in well-paid employment within fifteen months of graduation.
This summer the government announced plans to cancel courses variously described as “Mickey Mouse”, “rip-off” and “low value” which, they say, do not lead to good jobs.
Then there are recruitment agencies. According to Hays, there has been a near doubling – a 90% increase – in the number of businesses stipulating a degree as a prerequisite for job applicants.
Simon Winfield, the CEO of Hays, questions the relevance of many university courses.
“The world of work is moving faster than many university curricula, and instead the opportunities to learn through practical application in the workplace will always be relevant.”
Of late, the university experience has not been what it was a generation ago.
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1:48
A-level disparities: What do we do next?
Anyone at school or university over the past four years had their education substantially disrupted by COVID and strikes by teachers and lecturers.
Courses and lectures were conducted remotely because of the lockdown. There was little chance for social interaction.
Online technology also opened up new possibilities which have not been entirely abandoned.
Around a quarter of lectures and tutorials offered this year are still “hybrid”, ie with the option of online rather than in-person learning.
Students contemplating high fees might also note that some of the best lecture courses from around the world can be found on YouTube, often for free.
Many young people are having trouble graduating this year because of the marking boycott by members of the University and College Union.
Freshers following them to university in the autumn can expect continued disruption as lecturers plan to strike again despite having a pay award imposed on them.
It costs a lot to go to university. A year’s tuition in England carries a price tag of £9,250 for UK residents and double that for international students.
By the time they’ve covered living costs for three or four years, many homegrown graduates will have debts of around £50,000.
The government is just lowering the threshold and extending the decades over which they will have to repay after leaving.
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This year there is a population bulge in 18-year-olds just as accommodation is getting more expensive because of mortgage increases for landlords.
In some cases, accommodation is becoming scarcer because properties are being used for Airbnbs and because universities are behind schedule with the construction of new properties for students.
In spite of the financial burden on students, university authorities say they are in danger of going bust.
If the £9,250 tuition fee had gone up in line with inflation it would now be over £12,000 but it is politically unpopular and has been capped. Sir Keir Starmer only recently dropped Labour’s pledge to drop the fees.
Universities calculate that they are losing around £2,500 per home student and it is alleged that this is forcing them to increase the proportion of international students, and to syphon domestic students into less expensive courses that do not require expensive facilities such as laboratories.
The tuition fee system has been vexed ever since it was set up.
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0:57
Sky’s Dan Whitehead explains available options if you didn’t get the A-level results you needed.
The industrialist Lord Browne, who reviewed it for the Blair government, envisioned a true market where there would be great variation in the fees charged – up to £14,000 for some courses.
But the government capped it with the result that almost all opted for the maximum £9,000.
When I was a lay member on the board of King’s College London, a delegation from the National Union of Students pleaded to be charged the top rate. If not, they thought their qualifications would be valued less than those from other Russell Group universities.
Given all this negativity it is not surprising that the number of young people, aged 18-24, who think “university is a waste of time” has gone up a bit to 32% compared to 22% who disagree. Almost half of them don’t know.
In reality, the picture is much brighter for universities here.
The UK is now close to hitting New Labour’s aspiration of half of school leavers having gone to university by the age of 30.
By the Sunak government’s utilitarian attitude, three-quarters of graduates are in work at or above the median national wage within 15 months of finishing their studies.
73% say their degree helped them find a job, and 75% say they built their skills while at university.
On average, graduates earn £10,000 a year more than those who didn’t go to university. Those who go into law, banking, the energy sector and retailing do best.
Children who are the first generation in their family to go to university tend to earn more than other graduates – although those from private schools are still more represented in the highest-earning echelons than those who qualified for free school meals.
97% of bosses say they still look to recruit graduates. Some jobs require a degree for entry – including “the professions” such as medicine, accountancy, law, science, engineering, and of course, by definition, academia.
The rapidly developing tech sector, identified by Hays recruiters, may be the exception – Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg were both Harvard dropouts.
Thanks to a “buyers market” some employers were guilty of “qualifications inflation” by requiring degrees although they were not strictly relevant.
If that trend is ending so much the better.
Equally many employers have cut back on training opportunities compared to a generation ago.
Forty years ago the routes into the media were paid, either on-the-job traineeships for school leavers or graduate traineeships in media organisations.
These no longer exist, instead students pay for their own training at institutions which effectively control access to unpaid “work placements”.
Image: A maths exam in progress at Pittville High School, Cheltenham
This can either be at the undergraduate level in the wrongly sneered at “Mickey Mouse” courses at “new universities” or specialist postgraduate master’s degrees.
The few remaining trophy “traineeships” at organisations such as the BBC tend to go to those who have already gone through this process including “work experience”.
Bhaska Vina, pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge admits that the “graduate premium” on earnings is a good reason to go to university.
He is right to point out that it is also “a moment of independence and personal discovery” where young people develop transferable analytical, communicative and collaborative skills alongside their studies.
This applies to all subjects and not just the business studies and STEM subjects favoured by the present government.
On balance then, if you are wondering whether to go to university or not, the evidence suggests that, yes, for all the present tribulations and expense it is probably still worth it.
TV presenter Phil Spencer has spoken out following the death of his parents in a car crash at their home, calling it “horrendous” but taking strength from the fact they were together when they died
Spencer’s father Richard, 89, and mother Anne, 82, both died following the accident at their farm in Kent on Saturday.
The Location, Location, Location star posted a message on Instagram, along with a recent photo of his mum and dad, paying tribute and describing the details of the crash.
He wrote: “Very sadly both of my amazing parents died on Friday.
“As a family we are all trying to hold onto the fact Mum and Dad went together and that neither will ever have to mourn the loss of the other one. Which is a blessing in itself.”
He went on to describe details of the crash, saying the car “toppled over a bridge” on their estate in Littlebourne, near Canterbury, and ended up “upside down in the river”.
Despite his parents being pulled from the vehicle, he said they “never regained consciousness”.
He said while both had been “on extremely good form in the days before” the accident, he said his parents were both suffering from health issues.
He wrote: “Mums Parkinson’s and Dads Dementia had been worsening and the long term future was set to be a challenge.”
He said that just a week ago his mother had told him, “now it looks like we will probably go together,” adding, “and so they did”.
The couple, who were on their way to a local pub to have lunch when the accident took place, were described as “both people of Christian faith” by Spencer’s Location co-host Kirstie Allsopp when she posted a tribute on Saturday.
Spencer’s message went on: “That was what God had planned for them – and it was a good plan”.
He went on to explain how the accident took place, writing: “The car, going very slowly, toppled over a bridge on the farm drive, upside down into the river.
“There were no physical injuries and I very much doubt they would have even fought it – they would have held hands under the water and quietly slipped away”.
He said the alarm was quickly raised by his parents’ carer – a woman in her 60s who was with them in the car at the time of the crash – and who managed to escape from the back window of the car.
Spencer said his older brother, David, stepped in to try to save his parents, but to no avail.
He wrote: “As many farmers do – my brother had a penknife and so was able to cut the seat belts – he pulled them out of the river but they never regained consciousness”.
Spencer concluded: “Although desperately sad and shocked beyond all belief – all family are clear that if there can ever be such a thing as having a “good end” – this was it.
“It feels horrendous right now, but after almost 60 years of marriage – to die together on the farm they so loved will, I know, be a comfort in the future.
“Mum Dad are together which is precisely where they would have wanted to be”.
A day for dreams to be fulfilled – as England face their date with destiny and the prospect of becoming World Cup winners.
Fans are scattered throughout the bars of Sydney savouring the magnitude of what awaits on Sunday night against Spain.
“Whether we win or not – as a country and for the Women’s World Cup we’ve won,” one England fan told Sky News, soaking up the pre-final buildup in a bar on Saturday night.
“It’s a massive step for women’s football. But damn I want to win tomorrow. Everything I’ve dreamed of since I was a child.”
Read more: Follow the final live
Image: England’s Lauren Hemp celebrates scoring their second goal against Australia in their semi-final
Dreams of trophies. But contesting such a final, on such a stage as Stadium Australia, seemed just a dream for these players growing up.
“I think it will be the biggest moment in our careers,” England captain Millie Bright said. “It’s obviously a dream come true.”
So it feels for Spain players who grew up only seeing the men’s game with the limelight and investment.
“We have grown up thinking that football was something that didn’t belong to us – there were always obstacles,” Spain captain Irene Paredes said. “It was not our space, or at least that is what they made us feel.”
They know the pioneers of women’s football went generations before.
Image: England fans are hoping to see the Lionesses lift the World Cup trophy for the first time
These Lionesses – along with La Roja – have propelled the game to a new level.
They stand on the brink of being England’s first World Cup winners since the men in 1966.
The teams are bonded through the nation’s footballing history.
Historical challenges
But the Lionesses have had to overcome historical challenges.
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2:28
Lionesses to play ‘best game ever’?
Equal billing as footballers was denied by misogyny – with women banned from playing football in England for half a century until the 1970s.
The gender pay gap in the sport remains vast.
By Sunday night, the most successful England team of all time could be the one guided to glory by Sarina Wiegman – the first person to manage two different countries in World Cup finals after losing with her native Netherlands in 2019.
Image: Captain Millie Bright
Just like at the European Championship, England have swept into the final by winning every game so far at the Women’s World Cup.
Success in Sydney would complete a double a year after lifting European silverware.
But don’t forget how close the Lionesses came to a quarter-final exit from their home tournament – just six minutes from losing.
Spain awaits
Image: Spain stand in England’s way – and their form has been stunning
And to whom? Spain – the opponents awaiting in Stadium Australia.
But four of that starting line-up are not in Australia after being part of a mutiny against coach Jorge Vilda over demands for a more professional environment.
“Next question please,” he responded when asked about the revolt on the eve of the final.
Of the 15 players who withdrew from consideration for Spain only three returned to the fold for the World Cup – Ona Batlle, Aitana Bonmati and Mariona Caldentey.
Back in July 2022, the Lionesses produced the equaliser against Spain through Ella Toone and went on to secure their semi-final place through Georgia Stanway in extra time.
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0:49
England fans: ‘They will bring it home’
Read more: Where to watch England v Spain final The stars who might bring home World Cup King urges Lionesses to ‘roar to victory’
Both players remain part of this run to the final – although Toone’s starting spot owes much to Lauren James being suspended for the last two matches in Australia.
The return of James gives England options.
The Chelsea forward had a team-leading three goals before her last-16 stamp against Nigeria.
Since then, Lauren Hemp and Alessia Russo have also made it to three goals.
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England have had to contend with disruption to selection plans caused by injury with captain Leah Williamson and striker Beth Mead lost before the tournament.
But replacement captain Bright has forged a strong three-woman defensive back-line with Alex Greenwood and Jess Carter.
New territory
They are facing a Spain packed with goal threats – even with two-time Ballon d’Or winner Alexia Putellas yet to make her usual devastating impact after recovering from an ACL injury.
Jennifer Hermoso, Alba Redondo and Aitana Bonmati have all notched up a trio of goals each.
But look down the Golden Boot chart and there is the formidable teen force of Salma Paralluelo who has two goals.
Image: Coach Sarina Wiegman
The 19-year-old winger wasn’t even in the squad at Euro 2022 – showing how Spain’s strength just keeps on growing at only their third Women’s World Cup and the furthest they have ever reached.
The Lionesses have made it to the last four at three World Cups by contrast – and that pedigree should count in their favour.
But they have never made it to a final before.
This final represents a power shift as cash and commitment to women’s football in Europe has been accelerated.
This is historic terrain that can raise women’s football to another level in England – and elevate the legendary status of the Lionesses.
The parents of TV presenter Phil Spencer have been killed in a car accident near their home, his co-star Kirstie Allsopp has confirmed.
Fellow Location, Location, Location presenter Allsopp told fans to join her in “sending so much love” to co-star Spencer, following the death of the couple on Friday.
Spencer’s father Richard, 89, and mother Anne, 82, were rescued from the vehicle but could not be saved.
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Sharing a photograph of the late couple, Allsopp wrote on Instagram: “This lovely photograph, recently taken at their home in Kent, is of Anne and David Spencer, I am desperately sad to have to say that they were both killed yesterday in a car accident near their home.
“They were farmers, animal lovers and devoted parents to Robert, Caryn, Helen and Philip and adored their eight grandchildren, the only blessing is that they died together, so will never have to mourn the loss of each other.
“I suspect many of you may want to join me in sending so much love to Phil and all his family.
“Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers, thank you.”
Image: Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer have worked together for 23 years
Kent Police said they were called at 12.36pm to a report of a single-vehicle collision.
A spokeswoman said: “Officers attended along with other emergency services and a man and woman in their 80s were taken to a local hospital where they were later pronounced deceased.
“A third person, a woman in her 60s, was in the vehicle and sustained minor injuries.
“The next of kin has been informed and a report will now be prepared for the coroner.”
Spencer and Allsopp are most well known for presenting Location, Location, Location together for more than 20 years.
The pair, who have worked together since the year 2000 and who are both married with children, have appeared in 39 series of the hit Channel 4 property programme, as well as spin-off shows including Relocation, Relocation.
<a href='https://www.skysports.com/football/story-telling/37390/12893659/englands-womens-world-cup-squad-meet-the-lionesses?inApp=true'>Who are the stars who might bring home Women's World Cup glory?</a>
A new COVID variant with a “high number of mutations” has been detected in the UK.
The mutation, known as BA.2.86, was identified in the UK on Friday in an individual with no recent travel history, the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) said.
This means there could already be “significant community transmission” among Britons, the agency said.
The “high number of mutations” – 33 to be precise – means that spike proteins, the membranes on the outside of the virus that allow it to enter and infect human cells, will change their shape.
Read more: What is the ‘Pi COPVID variant – and should we be worried?
“Having changed their shape, they may become more infectious, they may become more disease-causing,” Dr Bharat Pankhania, an infectious disease control expert from the University of Exeter, told Sky News.
“On the other hand, they may not. We just don’t know yet,” he said.
The BA.2.86 mutation was first detected in Denmark on 24 July and has also been discovered in Israel and the US.
It is thought to be the likely ancestor of the BA.2 variant, nicknamed “stealth Omicron”, which originated in southern Africa and was first detected in the UK by late 2021.
Image: Pic: UK Health Security Agency
It comes after a variant known as EG.5.1 was reported to be making up one in seven new cases in the UK.
The UKHSA said there is “insufficient data” to assess how serious the BA.2.86 strain might be, or how likely it is that current vaccines will protect against it.
It is “the most striking SARS-CoV-2 strain the world has witnessed since the emergence of Omicron”, Francois Balloux, professor of computational systems biology and director of the UCL Genetics Institute at University College London, said.
However, it is unlikely to cause a fresh wave of severe disease and deaths, or prompt fresh restrictions on people’s daily lives, because most people have some immunity to the illness.
Read more: Man’s legs turn blue in unusual Long COVID case Sick cats in Cyprus begin COVID drug treatment
“Even if people get reinfected by BA.2.86, immune memory will still allow their immune system to kick in and control the infection far more effectively,” Prof Balloux said.
“It remains that a large wave of infection by BA.2.86, or any future comparable variant, would be an unwelcome event.”
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5:44
Why UK COVID rates are rising
It is likely to have emerged in an immunocompromised person – someone who has a weaker immune system – who later spread it, Prof Balloux said.
He said that global vaccination is the best thing to do to reduce infections.
The UKHSA said it is “undertaking detailed assessment” and will provide further information on the new variant in due course.
Very strong winds and heavy rain are expected across the UK, as Storm Betty’s arrival causes multiple weather warnings for the start of the weekend.
The storm – which arrived in the UK on Friday – is the second named storm this month, following Storm Antoni.
The warnings follow a wet and windy night, particularly around the Irish Sea, with overnight gusts of 66 miles per hour (mph) recorded in Capel Curig, Gwynedd, in Wales.
A warning for strong winds remains in force until around noon on Saturday for western parts of England and Wales as well as the eastern area of Northern Ireland.
The Met Office says there is a risk of injuries and danger to life from large waves and beach material being thrown onto sea fronts, coastal roads and properties.
Gusts of wind may also cause damage to buildings, such as tiles blown from roofs.
There is also potential for power cuts and mobile phone coverage could be affected.
Those making journeys are being advised to take care, with spray and flooding on roads adding to travel time, while those on public transport could be hit by cancellations and delays.
Flooding of homes and businesses could also be possible in some areas.
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A weather warning for rain is also in place for Central Scotland, Tayside and Fife, Grampian, southwest Scotland, Lothian Borders and Strathclyde.
The highest rainfall totals are expected over east-facing high ground in the Angus Hills and the Grampian Mountains where between 40-60mm could accumulate.
Strong and gusty southeasterly winds will accompany the rain, with gusts perhaps as high as 40mph around some exposed coasts and hills in the east.
Read more: UK weather: The latest Sky News forecast
Warnings are in force until midday on Saturday.
Betty is the second storm named in August.
She marks the second time since storm naming was introduced in 2015 that two storms have been named in August, following Ellen and Francis in August 2020.
Dartmoor National Park has been at the centre of a couple of overlapping stories this summer: the overturning of a ban on wild camping and arguments over whether livestock farmers were ruining or improving the place for nature.
A question that has echoes across many of our supposedly protected landscapes. So, those rows made good reasons to put my tent in my rucksack and head to the heath.
Dartmoor is 953 sq km and I aimed for Holne Moor, walking about a mile from the road through small clusters, barely herds, of cattle and ponies.
The sheep are a bit more numerous with 145,000 over the whole area.
The vegetation immediately around me is rough grass, stands of bracken and scrubby heather. Beautiful if you admire sparse, less so if you love bounty.
One of the conservationists accusations is that this place is over-grazed, with little variety of species and very few trees. Certainly avoiding the dung was a challenge when finding a camping pitch.
No baying beasts overnight but the morning brought one of the moor’s infamous fogs featured in Sherlock Holmes’ Hound Of The Baskervilles.
Striking camp and setting off through the murk I make a rendezvous with Guy Shrubsole, environmentalist and author who lives nearby.
“Our national parks are in a pretty shocking state for nature… they’ve actually found that on average, they’re in a worse condition than nature is, outside our national parks.
“We’d expect there to be a lot more dwarf shrub heath, things like bilberry and heather growing in much more abundance.
“And that obviously supports a whole range of other species of birds and mammals as well. Dartmoor is a very overgrazed landscape.
“Records suggest that after the second world war there were about 40,000 sheep grazed on the Dartmoor. By 1990 that had risen to something like 130,000.”
He would like to see national parks being a key part of the government’s ambition to have 30% of the UK protected for nature recovery by 2030.
Read more: Hundreds of water voles reintroduced to Lake District UK’s largest opencast coal mine confirms closure date Thousands of hours of fishing still taking place in UK Marine Conservation Zones
But national parks in Britain never have been primarily for wilderness like Yellowstone or Yosemite in America. They are for the people who live there too. And many of the people who live there are farmers.
Plenty of them rear livestock and believe that grazed landscape, not scrubby woodland, is what people flock to see – 18 million visitors a year in Dartmoor – and point out that some wildlife needs pasture.
When we are there, a group curlew chicks relocated from East Anglia is released on Neil Coles’ farm.
He thinks much of the moor is now under-grazed.
“The birds have all gone because it is not the habitat they like. We need a balance of areas. Wooded in the valleys but we also need tight grazing on the top for the ground nesting birds. In a natural situation there would be herbivores, so we are managing that and producing food,” he said.
The vexed question of how many cows, sheep and ponies should be grazing, the moor is the subject of a government commissioned but independent review due to report in the autumn.
It will be scrutinised not just here but across many of our upland parks like The Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors which are facing similar dilemmas.
But the recommendations from government sponsored reports aren’t always followed. Four years ago there was much fanfare over the Glover Review into the future of our national parks.
One of its proposals was that parks should have a duty to enhance nature. That hasn’t been taken up.
Each national park is run by an authority with some control over planning but little real power other than encouraging different groups to talk to each other.
Ironically, they have more power over the built environment than the natural environment.
Kevin Bishop is chief executive of Dartmoor National Park and he wants national parks to be “the beating heart of a nature recovery network”.
So, I asked if he has the power to deliver that?
“We don’t have those powers. We don’t have the resources to do it. The government could change our purposes but without giving us the powers and without giving us the pounds new purposes are, in essence, meaningless.”
The power he really wants is to be able to change the behaviour of farmers by having control over the payments farmers get for looking after nature.
“The most important tool in my book for nature recovery is agri-environment agreements… We have no formal role in the current environment schemes.”
National parks can’t change significantly on their own. Their future rests on the powers we give them and that is a decision for parliament and the nation.
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Watch The Climate Show with Tom Heap on Saturday and Sunday at 3pm and 7.30pm on Sky News, on the Sky News website and app, and on YouTube and Twitter.
Sara Sharif’s father, stepmother and uncle have been identified in connection with her murder investigation, Surrey Police have said.
An international manhunt is under way for Urfan Sharif, 41, Beinash Batool, 29, and Faisal Shahzad Malik, 28, as officers try to work out what happened to the 10-year-old.
Mr Sharif is believed to have travelled to Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, on 9 August with his partner Ms Batool, his brother Mr Malik, and five children aged between one and 13-years old.
A body, now formally identified as Sara’s following DNA testing, was found by police at a home in Woking a day later, at around 2.50pm.
The force said a post-mortem revealed that Sara “suffered multiple and extensive injuries”, which they said were “likely to have been caused over a sustained and extended period of time”.
However, the cause of Sara’s death is “still to be established”, and further tests were needed, a spokesperson said.
Image: Sara Sharif
It is now known that Urfan Sharif called 999 from Islamabad on 10 August, expressing a concern for his eldest daughter’s safety – although exact details of the conversation are unknown.
Sky News has seen the passports and holding plane tickets for Mr Sharif, Ms Batool and Mr Malik.
Eight tickets in total were booked by Sara’s father.
These were for three adults and five children – and paid for by his brother Mr Malik at a cost of around £5,100, according to Nadeem Riaz, the travel agent that sold the tickets.
Mr Riaz told Sky News he initially had a phone call with Mr Sharif, whose voice sounded “totally normal”.
“On 8 August at 10pm I received a call. Urfan said he wanted to book a ticket to Pakistan. He said his cousin passed away. I told him to send me passport pictures,” Mr Riaz said.
Mr Sharif sent these to Mr Riaz on WhatsApp, followed by a text that read: “As soon as possible.”
Mr Riaz told Sky News: “I asked him one way or return. He said ‘one way’.”
He added: “Whenever I look at my daughters… she is seven years old… and I feel very sad for Sara. I feel pain.”
Image: Nadeem Riaz said he spoke to Mr Sharif on the phone
Read more: Sara Sharif’s cause of death ‘still to be established’ Trio booked flights to Pakistan a day before body found
Police have been working with international authorities to locate the trio and are urging any witnesses – or anyone with information – to come forward.
There is no formal extradition treaty between the UK and Pakistan.
Image: Surrey Police officers outside the property
Mr Sharif and Mr Malik both have Pakistani passports, and it is understood that Ms Batool and the five children have Pakistani NICOP cards – the National Identity Card for Oversees Pakistanis – which allows individuals to travel to Pakistan without visas.
Meanwhile, officers remain at the property in Hammond Road in Horsell, a village less than a mile north of Woking town centre.
Neighbours said a Pakistani family with six “very young” children had moved in in April.
Flowers have been left outside, with one message reading: “Sweet girl, I’m so sorry that your sparkle was put out too soon.”
Police are expected to remain at the property in the quiet Woking village of Horsell for “some weeks”.
