Sara Sharif, a 10-year-old girl found dead alone in Surrey, was spotted at school months before she passed covered in ‘cuts and bruises’, a neighbour has said.

The youngster was found at a property in Woking, northwest Surrey, on August 10.

Her father Urfan Sharif, uncle Faisal Shahzad Malik, and her father’s partner Beinash Batool jetted off to Pakistan with five other children the day before she was found.

Urfan, 41, phoned British police from Islamabad, Pakistan, alerting them to Sara, launching a manhunt for the three, with Imran since detained in Pakistan.

Another one of Sara’s uncles, told police in Jhelum, a region of the northern Punjab province, that Sara had ‘fallen down the stairs and broken her neck’. (A post-mortem has yet to establish a cause of death.)

A neighbour of the family told the BBC that her own daughter had seen Sara with ‘clearly visible injuries’ in April, the broadcaster said.

‘Just before the Easter holidays she was in school and had cuts and bruises on her face and her neck,’ the neighbour, wishing to be referred to as Jessica, said.

‘My daughter had asked what had happened and she said she’d fallen off a bike and then kind of walked away.

‘The next day the teacher announced she had left school and she was being home-schooled.’

Sara was, according to Jessica’s daughter, never seen at school again.

Her parents had told another neighbour, who did not wish to be named by the BBC, that Sara was being taught at home because she was bullied for wearing a hijab.

Surrey Police were called to a property in Hammond Road believed to be Sara’s home at around 2:50am following Urfan’s 999 call.

Detectives believe he, Imran, Beinash and five children aged between one and 15 travelled to Islamabad on August 9.

An autopsy did not establish the cause of Sara’s death but revealed she ‘suffered multiple and extensive injuries, which are likely to have been caused over a sustained and extended period of time’, county police said.

The investigation remains ongoing.

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