TikTok influencer’s double murder sentence ‘wholly disproportionate’, court told

A TikTok influencer who murdered her mother’s lover and his friend in a high-speed car chase should have her sentence reduced as it is “wholly disproportionate”, the Court of Appeal has been told.

Mahek Bukhari was jailed for a minimum of 31 years in September 2023 for her involvement in the murders of Saqib Hussain and Mohammed Hashim Ijazuddin in February 2022, with her mother, Ansreen, also convicted and imprisoned for at least 26 years.

Two others were also convicted of the murders, with a further three found guilty of two counts of manslaughter.

Their trial at Leicester Crown Court heard that the murders followed Ansreen’s unsuccessful attempts to break off her affair with Mr Hussain.

Mr Hussain had threatened to release sexually explicit material he had of Ansreen if she did not pay him the £3,000 he claimed to have spent on her during their tryst, jurors heard.

Prosecutors claimed Mr Hussain and Mr Ijazuddin, both 21 and from Banbury in Oxfordshire, were “lured” to “one last meeting” with the Bukharis in a Tesco car park in Hamilton, Leicester, under the pretence of returning the money.

But the Bukharis and others ambushed the pair, chasing Mr Ijazuddin’s Skoda along the A46 in Leicester in two vehicles and deliberately ramming them off the road, the trial heard.

At the Court of Appeal on Friday, barristers for Mahek said her sentence should be reduced as it did not reflect that Mr Hussain had demonstrated “controlling behaviour” towards her mother in the hours before the killing.

Christopher Millington KC, for Mahek, who was 24 at the time of her sentencing, said Mr Hussain threatened to release the sexually explicit material, which was “the end of a very long series of threatening messages”.

This had a “very direct evidential bearing” on the Bukharis’ decision to travel to Leicester to meet Mr Hussain, Mr Millington said.

He said: “None of this, we submit, was reflected in the fixing of the minimum term as it should have been.”

Mr Millington also said that the killing was “heat of the moment, rather than cold-blooded murder”.

He continued: “There was a plan, but it was not a plan to kill Saqib, or anyone else.

“It plainly involved the real possibility of violence, beating up perhaps, it was never considered to be a plan to kill or cause really serious bodily injury.”

Mr Millington told the hearing in London that Mahek’s age and “lack of maturity” also should have led to a shorter sentence.

He concluded: “One has been left with a term that is wholly disproportionate.”

After the car chase began, Mr Hussain told police in a 999 call moments before his death that his and Mr Ijazuddin’s car was being “rammed off the road” by assailants.

Analysis by forensic collision investigators showed that one of the cars involved in the chase reached speeds of up to 100mph.

Sentencing, Judge Timothy Spencer KC said Mahek’s “tawdry fame” as a social media influencer made her “utterly self–obsessed” and “oblivious to the damage you do”.

Collingwood Thompson KC, for the Crown Prosecution Service, acknowledged at the hearing on Friday that blackmail by Mr Hussain “undoubtedly existed” and was “relevant”, but said the sentence should not be reduced.

He said: “The fact is that the appellant did contemplate with her mother going to the police, and if they had gone to the police, none of this would have happened.

“A conscious decision was made not to go to the police and deal with it in that way, and deal with it another way.”

He concluded: “This was a tough sentence, but it was not manifestly excessive.”

Lord Justice Warby, Mr Justice Lavender and Judge Sylvia De Bertodano will give their judgment in writing at a later date.