She argued that her prison term was “wholly disproportionate” to the crime
TikTok influencer Mahek Bukhari (Image: Instagram)
A TikTok influencer who murdered her mother’s lover and his friend in a high-speed car chase has had the minimum term of her life sentence reduced at the Court of Appeal.
Mahek Bukhari was jailed for at least 31 years and eight months in September 2023 for the murders of Saqib Hussain and Mohammed Hashim Ijazuddin in February 2022.
Her mother, Ansreen Bukhari, was also convicted and imprisoned for at least 26 years and nine months.
Mahek challenged her sentence earlier this month, when her lawyers told a hearing that the minimum term was “wholly disproportionate”.
In a ruling on Friday, Lord Justice Warby, Mr Justice Lavender and Judge Sylvia De Bertodano found Mahek’s sentence to be “manifestly excessive” and reduced the minimum term to one of 26 years and 285 days.
Reading a summary of the ruling in court, Lord Justice Warby said: “The judge did not make enough allowance for the fact that this appellant was an immature 22-year-old at the time of these offences.”
A trial at Leicester Crown Court two years ago heard that the murders followed Ansreen’s unsuccessful attempts to break off her affair with Mr Hussain.
Jurors heard that 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 affair.
Saqib Hussain and Mohammed Hashim Ijazuddin, who both died in the crash
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 men, chasing Mr Ijazuddin’s Skoda along the A46 in Leicester in two vehicles, and deliberately ramming them off the road, the trial heard.
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, and said: “I’m begging you, I’m gonna die.”
Analysis by forensic collision investigators showed that one of the cars involved in the chase reached speeds of up to 100mph.
Mahek Bukhari (right) and her mother Ansreen Bukhari arrive at Leicester Crown Court(Image: Jacob King/PA Wire)
At a hearing on October 17, Christopher Millington KC, for Mahek, said that her age and “lack of maturity” should have led to a shorter sentence.
He said that before the Bukharis decided to travel from their home near Stoke-on-Trent to Leicester, Mr Hussain had threatened to release the sexually explicit material he had of Ansreen.
The KC said: “None of this, we submit, was reflected in the fixing of the minimum term as it should have been.”
The Crown Prosecution Service opposed the appeal.
Collingwood Thompson KC, for the CPS, acknowledged that blackmail by Mr Hussain “undoubtedly existed” but said that while the sentence was “tough”, it was not “manifestly excessive”.
In the Court of Appeal’s ruling, Lord Justice Warby said that Mahek’s response to Mr Hussain’s blackmail was “disproportionate”, saying it was “hard to see any real link between any of Saqib’s behaviour and the events on the A46 that led to his death”.
But he added that Mahek’s “youth and her acknowledged immaturity were given far too little weight”, and should have “exerted a substantial downward pressure on the minimum term”.
Two others were also convicted of the murders alongside the Bukharis – Rekan Karwan and Raees Jamal – with a further three – Natasha Akhtar, Ameer Jamal and Sanaf Gulamustafa – found guilty of two counts of manslaughter.
The three were jailed for 11 years and eight months, 14 years and eight months, and 14 years and nine months, respectively, and they also challenged their sentences alongside Mahek at the hearing in London.
Jamal’s sentence was reduced to 12 years and eight months, while Gulamustafa had his term cut to 12 years and nine months and Akhtar’s was reduced to nine years and eight months.