Surrey Council withdraws from case to bring Sara Sharif’s siblings home

Surrey County Council has stepped back from the effort to bring Sara Sharif’s five siblings back to the UK, leaving the children in Pakistan after months of legal manoeuvring between courts in England and Lahore. The retreat exposes a stark gap in child protection: the council that once sought their return no longer appears to have a route to enforce it, and the practical responsibility now sits with Pakistan’s authorities.

Sara was 10 when she was found dead at her home in Woking, Surrey, in August 2023. Her father, Urfan Sharif, and stepmother, Beinash Batool, were later convicted of her murder. After the killing, Sara’s siblings and half-siblings were taken to Pakistan, where they were first reported to be living at their paternal grandfather Muhammad Sharif’s home in Jhelum.

The children became the subject of a complex family-court dispute spanning the UK and Lahore. At one stage they were placed in the custody of the Child Protection Bureau in Pakistan, underlining how little direct control UK authorities retained once the children were outside the country. Reporting in December 2024 said they remained in Jhelum and that their identities were protected by a court order. A later High Court order allowed some information about the ongoing and previous proceedings to be made public in the public interest, but parts of the case stayed restricted to protect the children.

Muhammad Sharif has said he would fight to keep the children in Pakistan, and he sought to appeal in the High Court there. That left Surrey County Council pushing against not just a hostile family dispute, but the limits of cross-border family law, where enforcement depends on cooperation between jurisdictions that can move at very different speeds. The council had been seeking to return the five children to the UK, but has now withdrawn from the case.

The broader scandal has already triggered scrutiny of safeguarding failures by Surrey County Council, Surrey Police and Sara’s school. A later review said there had been multiple points where different action should have been taken. With the council now out of the repatriation battle, the unanswered question is not only where Sara’s siblings will live, but which agency, if any, can still be held accountable for their protection.