Two men died in a fireball when their car was driven off the road in a murder plot devised to silence one of the victims from revealing his affair with a married woman, a court has heard.
Saqib Hussain, 21, and childhood friend Mohammed Hashim Ijazuddin, 21, were killed on 11 February 2022 when their car hit a tree as they were being pursued by two vehicles at speeds approaching 100mph.
One of the vehicles contained Ansreen Bukhari, 45, who had had an on-off affair with Hussain for about three years and recently decided to call it off, jurors were told.
WhatsApp messages show her daughter, 23-year-old TikTok influencer Mahek Bukhari, known as Maya, told her mother: “I’ll get him jumped by guys, and he won’t know what day it is.”
Prosecutor Collingwood Thompson KC said Hussain “could not accept” the elder Bukhari’s decision and had started to blackmail her, threatening to tell her husband and sons about their relationship, and publish sexually explicit videos and photographs.
The mother and daughter, from Stoke-on-Trent, are on trial with six other defendants accused of luring Hussain and his friend to a Tesco car park on the outskirts of Leicester before pursuing them at speed and ramming their car off the road.
The couple are charged with murder alongside Natasha Akhtar, 22, Raees Jamal, 22, Rekan Karwan, 28, Mohammed Patel, 20, Sanaf Gulammustafa, 22, and Ammeer Jamal, 27. All eight defendants deny two counts of murder and an alternative charge of manslaughter.
At the prosecution opening at Leicester crown court on Monday, jurors were played the 999 call Hussain made shortly before his crash, where he could be heard saying: “I’m being followed by two vehicles. They’re trying to block me in.
“They’ve got balaclavas on. They’re trying to ram me off the road. They’re trying to kill me. I’m going to die.”
Their vehicle split in two and was consumed in a fireball when it hit a tree on the A46 outside Leicester, and it was this 999 call which alerted police to the fact it was “not a tragic accident,” Thompson said.
“Their investigation revealed a story of love, obsession, extortion and ultimately cold-blooded murder,” he added.
Thompson said Hussain, from Banbury, Oxfordshire, had told a number of friends about his relationship with Bukhari and said that he loved her, although the pair would often get into arguments and stop communicating for periods of time.
When she ended the relationship in January 2022, Hussain became “increasingly obsessive, professing his love for her and begging her to continue the relationship,” Thompson said.
The court heard how he began blackmailing her with sexually explicit photos and videos, and demanding back the £3,000 he claimed he had spent on her over the course of the relationship, but Bukhari was reluctant to call the police fearing it would lead to her husband finding out about the affair.
“Had she done that we would not be in this court trying allegations of murder,” Thompson said.
Instead she confided in her daughter, Marek, who at the time had about 230,000 followers on TikTok. The prosecution claimed she was essential in recruiting Karwan and the other defendants who caused the crash.
Thompson said they “set a trap” for Hussain where they planned to seize his phone containing the incriminating photos and videos.
“But even doing that he could send a message to Ansreen Bukhari’s husband, which would ruin Ansreen’s marriage and damage her reputation. Further, Mahek Bukhari was an influencer on social media and the revelation of that affair might even have caused damage to her standing,” Thompson told the court.
The trial continues.
