LONDON: The ongoing trial surrounding the death of 10-year-old Sara Sharif has thrown up disturbing evidence about a pattern of abuse, allegedly inflicted upon the child by her father, stepmother, and uncle Prosecutors contend that Sara`s death in Woking, Surrey, on Aug 8 last year was the tragic culmination of a campaign of abuse and neglect.

During Thursday`s session, the jury heard details from a series of messages exchanged between Sara`s stepmother Beinash Batool and her sister between 2020 and 2023.

Batool is reported to have cited Sara`s `naughty behaviour` as the reason for the punishments, even attributing her defiance to a supernatural force, telling her sister `she`s got a jinn in her`.

In various messages, Batool depicted her husband Urfan as prone to violent outbursts and shared accounts of him punishing Sara in ways that included all-night situps, verbal threats and physical beatings.

She claimed Sara had cut up his clothes, hidden keys, and torn documents, all acts which were described as `rebellious` and indicative of her socalled `bad behaviour`.