A TikTok star with more than 120,000 followers has been jailed after “setting a trap” to murder her mother’s 21-year-old lover after he threatened to blackmail her over a sex tape.
Social media influencer Mahek Bukhari, 24, was sentenced to life in prison at Leicester Crown Court alongside her mother Ansreen, 46, who must serve a minimum of 26 years and nine months after they were found guilty of murdering two men in a high-speed car chase.
Saqib Hussain and Mohammed Hashim Ijazuddin, both 21, died in a horrific crash that left their flaming Skoda Fabia “split in two” after they were rammed off the A46 dual carriageway near Leicester on February 11 last year.
In heartbreaking victim impact statements read to the court on Friday, the men’s loved ones spoke of the “torture” of their grief, challenging the killers: “Was it worth it?”
The court previously heard how Mahek, who posted fashion updates to her followers under the name Maya, helped set a plan in motion to silence her mother’s former lover after he threatened them with blackmail.
Hussain, who did not want their affair to end, was threatening to send sex tapes to Ansreen’s husband if she did not pay back the £3,000 he had spent wooing her.
Prosecutors said he was lured into meeting with the Bukharis in a Tesco car park in Hamilton, Leicester, on the pretence of being given back the £3,000.
Ansreen Bukhari, 46, appeared in her daughter’s video on TikTok— (Screengrab)
But the mother and daughter, from Stoke-on-Trent, arrived at the arranged meeting along with six others in two vehicles, an Audi TT and a Seat Leon, to ambush him.
Hussain, who was in the Skoda being driven by his friend Ijuzaddin as a favour, grew suspicious and they left without ever getting out of the car – with the Audi and Seat in quick pursuit.
In a desperate 999 call to police made by front-seat passenger Hussain moments before his death, he said their car was being “rammed off the road” by balaclava-wearing assailants in two pursuing cars.
He told operators: “They’re trying to ram me off the road. They’re trying to kill me. I’m going to die,” before the call abruptly ended.
Forensic collision investigators found the Audi had reached speeds of up to 100mph, while the Skoda was estimated at being in excess of 80mph at the time of the crash.
Saqib Hussain, from Banbury in Oxfordshire, died in a car crash on the A46 in Leicestershire in February 2022 along with Mohammed Hashim Ijazuddin (Leicestershire Police/PA)— (PA Media)
Mohammed Hashim Ijazuddin, from Banbury in Oxfordshire, died along with Saqib Hussain in the crash (Leicestershire Police/PA)— (PA Media)
Jurors deliberated for more than 28 hours before finding the mother and daughter guilty last month, following a three-month trial.
Fellow defendants Rekhan Karwan, 29, and Raees Jamal, 23, were also sentenced to life after being found guilty of two counts of murder.
Raees Jamal must serve 36 years, while Karwan faces a minimum term of 26 years and 10 months. Natasha Akhtar, 23, Ameer Jamal, 28, and Sanaf Gulamustafa, 23, were all found not guilty of murder, but guilty of two counts of manslaughter.
Akhtar was sentenced to 11 years and eight months, while Ameer Jamal faces 14 years and eight months and Gulamustafa 14 years and nine months.
Another defendant, Mohammed Patel, was found not guilty of murder or manslaughter.
Sentencing, Judge Timothy Spencer KC said Mahek Bukhari’s “tawdry fame” as a social media influencer had made her “utterly self-obsessed, with a wholly unjustified sense of entitlement” and “oblivious to the damage you do”.
He added: “The prosecution were right to categorise this case as cold-blooded murder.”
The YouTuber wiped away tears in the dock as her sentence was read out.
Addressing all of the defendants, Judge Spencer said rather than showing concern for the victims in the aftermath of the crash, they had been intent on “saving your own skin”.
He said: “Each has done all you can to try to avoid responsibility and to seek to explain away the evidence.
“So whilst remorse is expressed by some, it is little and late and has a hollow ring. The jury saw through your lies.”
(left to right from top) Ansreen Bukhari, Mahek Bukhari, Raees Jamal, Rekhan Karwan, Sanaf Gulamustafa, Ameer Jamal, Natasha Akhtar— (Leicestershire Police/PA Wire)
In a victim impact statement read out in court by prosecutor Collingwood Thompson KC, Hussain’s father Sajad, who was in court surrounded by family, described his son as his “pride and joy”.
He said: “He brought love and light into the lives of everyone who knew him. He was kind-hearted and selfless, and he was loved by all his friends and family and everyone who knew him.”
He described how Saqib’s mother fell to the floor “crying and screaming ‘my child, my child”’ when they were told by police their son had died.
Ijazuddin’s father, Sikander Hayat, told the packed courtroom his family have been living a “never-ending nightmare that has shattered our lives”.
Looking at the defendants in the dock, he said his son was “one hundred per cent innocent”.
He added: “My heart has been ripped out.
“Why did this happen to him? He did not know his murderers or what awaited him in that Tesco car park.
“We have lost our son in the worst possible way. The fear he must have felt in the moments leading up to his death. He was left with his friend to burn. It is heart-shattering.”
