Influencer Mahek Bukhari and her mother Ansreen Bukhari from Stoke-on-Trent have been charged with murder
(Picture: Instagram)A TikTok influencer has been accused of murdering her mother’s 21-year-old lover, a court has been told.
Mahek Bukhari, known as Maya, had 126,000 followers on TikTok and 43,000 on Instagram before her arrest, where she regularly shared posts updating followers on her clothes, handbags, and make-up.
Bukhari, from Stoke, Staffordshire, often appears in videos alongside her mother, Ansreen Bukhari.
Mahek Bukhari, 22, her mother Ansreen, 45, and six others are charged with murdering Saqib Hussain, and his friend Mohammed Hashim Ijazuddin, both 21, by ramming their car off the road.
Saqib Hussain and his friend Mohammed Hashim Ijazuddin were killed when their Skoda crashed into a tree just after midnight on February 11.
Just before he died, front-seat passenger Hussain called 999 claiming Ijazuddin’s silver Skoda Fabia was being “blocked in” and rammed by attackers wearing balaclavas who had been following them in two cars.
In a recording played at Leicester Crown Court, he said: “They’re trying to ram us off the road. Please, I’m begging you, I’m going to die.”
He also said, “Oh my God”, before there was a scream and the call cut off at the sound of an impact.
Police footage showed the Skoda in flames. The two men, from Banbury, Oxfordshire, had been friends since school. Ijazuddin had agreed to drive his friend to Leicester that night, described as a “fatal mistake that cost him his life”.
Collingwood Thompson KC, prosecuting, said Hussain’s 999 call was a key indicator that the crash “was not simply a tragic road-traffic accident but a deliberate murder”, reports Sky News.
Footage from police attending the crash scene, at about 1.35am, showed the Skoda Fabia in flames, resting against a tree in the central reservation of the A46 dual carriageway, by the Six Hills junction near Leicester.
Hussain’s family told detectives that he had had a three-year affair with Ansreen, who was married with children.
Hussain had recorded “sexually explicit” material, and photos and videos of the couple were found on Hussain’s Instagram account.
When Bukhari tried to end the relationship in January, he “became increasingly obsessive, professing his love for her”, Mr Thompson said.
After Bukhari would not return his calls, Mr Thompson said Hussain’s anger “manifested itself in an attempt to blackmail Ansreen Bukhari in order to persuade her to contact him”.
Bukhari confided in her daughter and Mr Thompson told jurors that it set out a possible motive to “silence” Hussain.
Mahek Bukhari and her mother Ansreen deny the men’s murders.
The trial continues.
