LONDON: A cousin of Beenish Batool, the stepmother of the 10-year-old Sara Sharif who was found dead in a home at Woking, Surrey, has made a public appeal for her relative to return to the United Kingdom and tell the authorities everything.

Requesting anonymity, the relative told Sky News, “Beenish should come back to the UK. I don’t know where she is. But I’m worried about her. I’m worried about her kids. She should come back to the UK, go to the police and tell them exactly what happened.”

“I don’t know, my family don’t know, what happened. It could have been an accident; a misunderstanding,” she added.

Her cousin is originally from Gujrat, and said Ms Batool was estranged from her parents after she ran away to marry Urfan Sharif, the father of Sara, who is now in hiding in Pakistan with his second wife and five children.

The relative said, “The relationship [with her family] is finished. She married secretly, and her father said, ‘She is not my daughter’. She hasn’t spoken to her parents since.”

Police continued to look for Mr Sharif and Ms Batool in Pakistan, but raids on the couple’s family homes in Mirpur and Jhelum have yielded nothing. News reports in the UK quoted Pakistani police officials as saying they were asked by the UK authorities to begin the search and manhunt for the couple and children “five days after her body was found”.

Published in Dawn, September 3rd, 2023