A man armed with a Kalashnikov beckons us to come down the street. We are in a small village in Pakistan to meet a man who says he can tell us how Sara Sharif’s family managed to hide from the police while in Pakistan for more than four weeks. The man carrying the rifle then answered this himself, saying that he was actually the one who hid them (Sarah’s family). For almost a month, police have been searching for Sara Sharif’s father Irfan Sharif, stepmother Benish Batool, uncle Faisal Malik and Sara’s five other siblings. All eight of them arrived in Pakistan from the UK on August 9, 2023. The day after their arrival in Pakistan, the police found the tortured body of 10-year-old Sarah Sharif in a bedroom of Irfan Sharif’s house in Woking, UK. After receiving a notice from Interpol to find Irfan, Benish and Faisal, Pakistani police had launched a nationwide search for the family and several teams were deployed in this regard. The police initially suspected Rasikh Munir, a relative of Irfan Sharif. But despite several raids at Rasikh’s house, the police were unable to find the wanted individuals. The five children who had accompanied Irfan Sharif and Benish from the UK were later found at the house of another relative. Rasikh Munir told the BBC that it was at this moment (the children were taken into custody) that Irfan, Benish and Faisal decided to return to the UK and were finally arrested on September 13, 2023, upon arrival there.
Since the news of Sarah's death broke, the BBC team has been following the story in Pakistan. Before Sarah's father, uncle and stepmother went on trial for murder in London and even before a jury in England heard the horrific details of the injuries to Sarah Sharif, such as the burns from a hot iron and bite marks on Sarah's body, we met Rasikh Munir in Pakistan.
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| BBC URDU |
Rasikh told us that he initially believed Irfan was innocent and had brought his family to Pakistan to protect his children. He also gave the extraordinary details of how, while dozens of investigators were searching for these men, they were seen wandering around the area, buying ice cream and even going to the barber's shop.He also told how one night when the police raided his house to search for Irfan and his family, the men hid in a nearby corn field to avoid the police. Shortly after Irfan and Benish’s five children were recovered from a relative’s house, the BBC team spoke to Sara’s grandfather in the same area. Rasikh told us that Irfan, Benish and Faisal were hiding in a neighbour’s house just yards from where we were speaking to Sara’s grandfather. We met Rasikh Munir in a suburban town in Sialkot district, Punjab, surrounded by rice fields and corn crops. There is barbed wire above the gate of his house and a security camera is also installed above it. When he came out of the house, he was wearing a tracksuit. Even before our meeting, Rasikh told me that he had done nothing wrong by hiding Irfan and his family. While the men were hiding in Rasikh’s house, Pakistani authorities had not received any Interpol requests for their arrest, but Rasikh was certain that the police wanted to speak to them (Irfan, Benish and Faisal) in connection with Sara’s death.
When we first met Rasikh face to face, within minutes he started showing us the house where Irfan, Benish and Faisal were hiding.
“This was Irfan’s room,” he said, pointing to a dark room. The curtains were drawn, and there was a white bed with a yellow sheet on it.
“They (Irfan and Faisal) slept here.” Rasikh pointed to a red plastic table and said, “They used to eat at this table.”
Pointing to a blue sofa, Rasikh said, “Irfan, Benish and Faisal used to sit here and contact the lawyer and discuss how they should talk to the police in the UK.”
Rasikh then led us to another bedroom. This room had dark red curtains and a double bed next to a wooden wardrobe. Showing us this room, Rasikh told us, “This is where Benish and the children used to sleep, some on the bed and some on mattresses on the floor.As we were talking, I noticed that Rasikh had a pistol strapped to his waist. When I asked about it, he told me that it was for protection from thieves. After that, we climbed onto the roof of the house. Pointing to the open fields below, Rasikh said, “You can keep an eye on all sides from this roof.” The view from here was clear, with a few single-storey houses and buildings and a few trees all the way to the main road. Rasikh told us that the police had come to his house in the dark of night on several occasions to search for Irfan and his family. He told how Irfan and his family would hide in a dense corn field a few meters from the house during such police raids, and that too in pitch darkness and extremely hot and humid weather.,Image captionRasakh says that when the children hid in the corn field to avoid the police, they were extremely scared.According to Rasakh, "The police never searched the area thoroughly. The children with Irfan and Benish did not have many clothes, just a bag of clothes. Most of their belongings were in my car, which I parked in a safe place." "The little children did not know what was happening. They were scared, they could not understand (the situation)."Rasakh said that it was not the first time that Irfan and his family had come to the house. They had come here to meet them in the past. And when they had last visited the house many years ago, Sara was also there with them. Rasakh recalled, "She was a very good girl."
Irfan and his family hid at Rasikh's house for several weeks, but it wasn't like they were always hiding from the police. Rasikh told us that during that time he took Irfan and his family several times from Sialkot to Jhelum, where Sara's grandfather lived. He also said that he would take them into the city for haircuts and sometimes for ice cream or pizzaRasikh said that he managed to get Irfan and his family past several police checkpoints without any hindrance before the police intensified their search. But then the police began to tighten their grip. Three weeks later, the police recovered Sara's siblings from her grandfather's house. The BBC spoke to Sara's grandfather a few minutes after the raid. Sara's grandfather, Mohammad Sharif, told us that "the police have taken all the children. They were safer with me." He added that Irfan and Benesh were not there when the raid took place at his grandfather's house. We were the first journalists to reach the house after the police raided the house of Dada Mohammad Sharif. The plastic toys that the children were playing with were still lying on the beds. The door of the room had been forced open. Now, here, Rasikh Munir tells us an unbelievable story. When we were at Sara’s grandfather’s house that day, Irfan, Benish, and Faisal were hiding in a neighbor’s house a few meters away.
They say that since the police only had a search warrant for Dada’s house, they were not allowed to go into nearby houses. They said that there were cameras installed outside the house, the footage of which could be viewed live on a large LCD screen in the house so that it would be known when the police were coming. According to Rasikh, the night the police came, Irfan, Benish, and Faisal “escaped.” They called him (Rasikh) and he went to get themRasikh says his family realised the game was over the next day. After the children were rescued from their grandfather’s house, a local court ordered the children to be kept in a sweet home. The BBC team was present during the court hearing that day. The eldest of the five children was holding the youngest and they were trying to shield their faces from the glare of the cameras amidst a crowd of police officers and local journalists. Rasikh Munir says the rescue of the children from their grandfather’s house and the increasing pressure from the police forced Irfan, Benish and Faisal to decide to return to the UK. After that, they contacted a lawyer in the UK and Surrey Police and informed them that they would be back in a few days. According to Rasikh, after this decision, he booked plane seats in the names of Irfan, Benish and Faisal, regardless of the fact that there was an Interpol notice for them. According to Rasikh, he was the one who drove the three to the airport and Irfan even called Rasikh from the departure lounge to tell him that he was waiting for the flight after security clearance. When the three arrived at Gatwick Airport in the UK, police arrested them on charges of Sarah’s murder. The following month, a local court granted permission for all five siblings to temporarily stay with relatives in Pakistan. Surrey County Council is still trying to bring them back to the UK, but their family in Pakistan is fighting a legal battle to keep them there. It is difficult to verify every aspect of Rasikh Munir’s story. He has no photographs of the time when Irfan and his family were hiding in his house. He told us that the police had seized his phone. But he was telling us the full details of his story in detail, and above all, he did not come to us on his own to tell us all this, but we tracked him down after months of searching. We also know that the police had raided his house several times and that the police suspected his involvement in the matter from the very beginning.
Throughout this conversation with Rasikh, we were curious as to why he was happy to talk to us. He told us that 'someone should tell us what really happened.' A person who hides the truth is not a good person.' But when Rasikh took Munir Irfan and his family to his house, he knew that Sara Sharif, whom he had met many years ago in his own home, had been found dead in her home in the UK and he also knew that the police wanted to talk to the three people hiding in their house in this regard.
Rasikh says, 'Whoever did this to Sara should be punished because he has committed a great injustice.' This seems a contradictory response from someone who deliberately hid the three accused. We asked Rasikh repeatedly if he didn't think he had done something wrong by hiding the three people and why he knowingly helped Irfan and his family. Rasikh says, 'This case was in the UK, it had nothing to do with Pakistan. If this case had been going on in Pakistan, I might not have taken such a big risk.'
"I helped Irfan and the little children with him. If I had not helped them, they would have been completely helpless. I helped them take care of the children, I felt sympathy for them." He asked us, "They were my people. If I had not stood by them and something bad had happened to them, who would have been responsible?"
Sara's grandfather and other family members have repeatedly approached the court with complaints that their family members are being picked up by the police just to pressure them to reveal their (Irfan and others) whereabouts. "The police in Pakistan deny this. They say that since the arrest of Irfan and his family, all cases against his family in Pakistan have been dropped. But a court order to keep the five children in the home of a relative in Pakistan remains in place. The five children, who spent their lives in the UK, are still in Pakistan and their future is currently uncertain.
Taken from BBC Urdu