Surrey Council Withholds Child Protection Report on Sara Sharif’s Killer, Citing His Data Rights
Surrey County Council is blocking publication of a damning domestic abuse report on Urfan Sharif — the man who tortured and killed his ten-year-old daughter — on the grounds that releasing it would violate his data protection rights.
The report, reviewed in November, found that social workers had gathered evidence of Sharif’s “extensive” history of domestic abuse before he began attacking Sara Sharif — but that the evidence was, in the review’s words, “lost within the system.” Sara was killed in August 2023 at the family home in Woking, Surrey. She was ten years old.
What the Suppressed Report Contains
In 2016, Sharif was ordered to attend a domestic violence perpetrator programme after Sara’s mother accused him of assaulting her and the children. He admitted to “extensive and wide-ranging domestic abuse” but completed only eight of the required 26 sessions. Assessors concluded there was “not enough evidence” he had changed his behaviour.
Despite the report making what reviewers described as “shocking reading,” a social worker failed to complete a formal analysis of its findings. The document was never added to Sara’s safeguarding record.
As a result, a family court judge — unaware of Sharif’s 16-year history of violence against women and children — placed Sara in her father’s care. The decision proved fatal.
The Killing and Its Aftermath
Sara suffered more than 100 injuries. She was tied up with a plastic bag secured over her head with parcel tape, beaten with a cricket bat, a metal pole and a rolling pin, strangled until her neck broke, burnt with an iron, and bitten. A judge described it as the worst crime he had ever encountered.
After killing Sara, Sharif fled to Pakistan with his wife and accomplice, Beinash Batool, before phoning 999 to confess — apparently believing he had evaded justice. He was subsequently captured and extradited. Both Sharif and Batool were sentenced to life imprisonment in December 2024.
Council Refuses Disclosure Under Freedom of Information Laws
Surrey County Council has declined to release the domestic abuse report in response to a Freedom of Information request, arguing that publication would breach Urfan Sharif’s rights under data protection legislation. Sharif is serving a life sentence with no prospect of release.
Woking MP Will Forster has called for the council to be placed into special measures. “This is absolutely appalling,” he said. “This man is in prison for killing his daughter and Surrey County Council are concerned with data protection. If they cared as much about protecting vulnerable children, perhaps this would never have happened.”
Forster added: “This report was an opportunity to save her, but it was lost within the system. Now this is about ducking responsibility.”
A Pattern of Institutional Failure
The suppression of the report is not the only accountability failure to emerge. Surrey County Council also granted Sharif — a taxi driver — a licence to transport children with special educational needs (SEND) to school, despite prior reports to police that he had abused women and children. The council has acknowledged that intelligence was not shared between departments.
A child safeguarding practice review published in November 2024 found that professionals across social work, policing and education had been aware of Sara’s unexplained injuries since her birth, but had failed to “join the dots.” The review found that concerns about “causing offence” over racial sensitivities had led professionals to overlook, underestimate and fail to act on the risk Sharif posed.
Council Response
A council spokesperson defended the decision not to publish: “This request relates to the personal data of a living person. Data protection legislation determines what can and cannot be shared about a person’s data and, as a public authority, Surrey County Council must observe all data protection principles when processing personal data.”
Council leader Tim Oliver said: “An independent safeguarding review was published last year. We are deeply sorry for the findings that related to us as a local authority. We take the findings with utmost seriousness.”
The council has not addressed why the safeguarding failures identified in the review were allowed to persist across multiple years and multiple agencies, nor why accountability for those failures remains shielded from public scrutiny.