The father, stepmother and uncle of 10-year-old Sarah, whose body was found near London in August, were arrested on suspicion of murder after returning to the UK, British police said. The BBC reported, citing Pakistani police, that they returned to the UK of their own free will.
A 10-year-old Polish-Pakistani girl, Sara, was found dead in her home in Woking, Surrey, near London on August 10. From the beginning, the British police were looking for her father, the 41-year-old father with whom the girl lived, his 29-year-old partner and the father’s 28-year-old brother in connection with the case. All three were to leave for Pakistan the day before, August 9.
As the BBC reported, citing the Pakistani police, the three returned to the UK of their own free will on Wednesday. When they got off the plane, they were accompanied by a group of people, probably police officers. “Two men, aged 41 and 28, and a woman, aged 29, have been arrested on suspicion of murder after disembarking from a flight from Dubai. They are currently in custody and will be questioned in due course,” Surrey Police later said in a statement.
Death of 10-year-old Sara
After an autopsy, British police said the exact cause of death had not yet been determined, but Sara died as a result of “numerous and extensive injuries that were probably inflicted over a long period of time.” A week ago, the mother of the killed girl, Olga Sh., spoke in the program Attention! TVN station that there were so many injuries on her daughter’s body that she had difficulty recognizing her.
Also a week ago Urfan Sh. and Beinash B. published a video on the Internet in which Sara’s adoptive mother said that the girl’s death was an accident and declared her readiness to cooperate with the British police. On Monday, the five children with whom they fled to Pakistan were taken by police from their grandfather’s home and placed in a state-run nursing home. The oldest of them, a 13-year-old boy, is also the child of Urfan Sh. and Olga Sh.
10-year-old Sara died in AugustSurrey Police via AP
As previously reported by British media, 36-year-old Olga Sh. in 2009, she married Pakistani taxi driver Urfan Sh., but in 2017 they divorced, and two years later the court awarded sole custody of Sara and her older brother to their father. The Pole claims that since then she has only been allowed to see her daughter twice, but they maintained regular telephone contact until 2021, when, under the influence of Beinash B., it was cut off almost completely.
PAP, BBC, tvn24.pl, Attention! TVN
Main photo source: Surrey Police via AP