A senior coroner has ordered Surrey County Council to disclose thousands of documents relating to the inquest into the murder of 10-year-old Sara Sharif, rejecting the council's attempt to withhold material it deemed irrelevant. Sara was found dead in August 2023 at her family home in Woking after suffering horrific abuse at the hands of her father, Urfan Sharif, and stepmother Beinash Batool, who were both jailed for life in December 2024. The ruling matters because it forces full transparency from the local authority over its knowledge of the family's circumstances ahead of Sara's death, including information about her surviving siblings.

Senior Coroner Richard Travers said he wants "all of the pages" — some 24,606 documents concerning Sara's siblings — handed over by the afternoon of 2 October, warning he would summon the council's chief executive to court if it failed to comply. Council barrister Alethea Redfern had argued many documents were unrelated to the case and that full disclosure went beyond what was necessary, but Travers said it was not the council's place to decide what should be disclosed. He also confirmed the inquest, previously due to start in April 2027, will be adjourned to a later date in October, saying he was not prepared to "rush" such an important hearing, while three witnesses applied for anonymity.