Sara Sharif's father denies responsibility of her death

LONDON: Sara Sharif's father, who has been accused of killing the 10-year-old girl, on Tuesday denied responsibility for his daughter's death during the murder trial. 

Sara was found dead last year in August at her home in Woking, a town southwest of London, after what prosecutors say was a campaign of "serious and repeated violence".

At the start of the trial, prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones told the jurors that the victim had suffered a number of injuries including burns and bite marks.

Her father Urfan Sharif, 42, his wife and Sara Sharif's stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, and the girl's uncle Faisal Malik, 29, are on trial at London's Old Bailey court charged with her murder.

The trio are charged with causing or allowing the death of a child. All three deny the charges against them and blame each other for her death, prosecutors have said.

Emlyn Jones told jurors earlier this month that Urfan Sharif said to police: "It wasn't my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much."

Sharif entered the witness box on Tuesday and was asked by his lawyer Naeem Mian whether he was responsible for Sara's death. He replied: "No."

He became emotional as he was asked by Mian to describe what Sara was like, saying she was "beautiful, an angel" and that her favourite colour was pink.

Sharif accepted slapping Sara on "a few occasions" to discipline her, but denied beating her in a regular or sustained way.

Mian had said to the jury that Sharif had wrongly been painted as a "villain", rather than Batool, for slapping Sara.

Batool's case, prosecutors have previously said, is that Urfan Sharif was a "violent disciplinarian" and that she was scared of him.

The trial is expected to run until December.