“To the woman who gave birth to me, I appreciate you so much,” a social media influencer shared on her TikTok account.
Like many other clips on the popular social media platform, the short video showed a young woman swaying to music, before a photo of her and her mother appeared in a heart.
Posted on January 19, 2022, less than a month later the two women would become embroiled in a murder plot that left two 21-year-old men dead.
Before her arrest, Mahek Bukhari had built a reputation as an online personality, regularly sharing makeup and lifestyle tips and fashion advice. With almost 130,000 followers on TikTok, 45,000 on Instagram and 3,900 subscribers on her YouTube channel, Mahek began to create a name for herself outside of her immediate circle.
If you scroll down her social media platforms, you’ll see a fashion graduate with tons of friends, who spent her weekends partying in Manchester and dancing to 10-second snippets of music in her family room.
Her 46-year-old mother, Ansreen Bukhari, regularly appears next to her. In one video, the two women are seen dancing together at their family home in Stoke-on-Trent.
But what seemed like a close family bond took a sinister turn in February 2022, in what became a “story of love, obsession, extortion and ultimately – cold-blooded murder.”
Three years earlier, Ansreen had begun a secret relationship with a younger man that only her daughter knew about. Despite the affair starting off as “a bit of fun”, Saqib Hussain soon fell in love with the older woman and spent thousands of pounds wooing her.
However, Ansreen had been married for over twenty years and had no intention of leaving her husband. In January 2022, she attempted to end the relationship against her younger lover’s wishes, with Hussain becoming increasingly obsessive.
Contact between the two deteriorated dramatically, with Hussein becoming frustrated after Bukhari did not return his calls. In what would prove to be a fatal mistake for him, he turned to blackmail.
Using sexually explicit images taken during their intimate moments together, he began threatening to send them to Ms Bukhari’s husband and son.
As her whirlwind romance quickly turned into a nightmare, Ansreen turned to her daughter for advice and help. In an ominous WhatsApp message, Mahek said: “I will have guys jump on him soon and he won’t know what day it is.”
From that moment on, a drastic plan was set in motion to silence Hussein, by any means necessary and regardless of the cost.
An agreement was initially struck whereby Ms Bukhari would pay her former lover up to £3,000 for his silence about the affair. However, the deal remained problematic as the two women would receive no confirmation that Hussain had deleted the sexually explicit images from his devices after the payment.
It was at this point that Mahek turned to her boyfriend, 28-year-old Rekan Karwan, for help. In turn, he recruited a number of others who would all play their part in setting a trap for Hussein, hoping that in numbers they could force him to give up his phone.
On February 11, 2022, Hussain traveled to Leicester before midnight with his childhood friend Mohammed Hashim Ijazuddin to meet the two women under false pretenses.
Footage from a Tesco car park showed Hussain and Ijazuddin never leaving their Skoda Fabia, with the prosecutor claiming they had gradually become suspicious.
Shortly afterwards they were seen leaving the car park with a Seat Leon and an Audi TT in pursuit, with both Mr Karwan and another accomplice, Raees Jamal, behind the wheels.
In his final moments, Hussain made a desperate call to 999, saying: ‘I’m being followed by two vehicles. They’re trying to stop me. They are wearing balaclavas.
‘They’re trying to run me off the road. They’re trying to kill me. I’m dying.”
There was a short scream, followed by the sound of a crash, before the call ended abruptly.
The dramatic crash resulted in Hussain and his friend Ijazuddin being engulfed in a fireball after their vehicle rammed off the A46 dual carriageway.
Police footage taken at 1.35am showed the Skoda in flames, resting against the tree at the Six Hills junction. Both men were identified through dental records after being trapped in the fire.
Once arrested, those involved claimed their intention behind the 100mph chase had been to stop the Skoda so a conversation could take place between the women and Hussain. They also made conflicting claims that they had traveled to a shisha bar in Nottingham and had not intended to ram the car off the road.
During the trial, Mahek admitted that she had lied to both the police and a previous jury about the events on the A46, claiming that her reasons for making false statements and providing the wrong PIN on her phone was due to “panic ”.
Bukhari was sentenced to life in prison on September 1 after being found guilty of murder at Leicester Crown Court. Her mother, 46, must serve a minimum of 26 years and nine months after being convicted of the same charge.
Judge Timothy Spencer KC said Bukhari’s “tasteless fame” as a social media influencer had left her “utterly self-obsessed, with a completely unwarranted sense of entitlement, and without a clear awareness of the impact you have on others, not feeling aware of the harm’ you are doing”.
He added: “The prosecutor was right to characterize this case as cold-blooded murder.”
Fellow defendants Rekhan Karwan, 29, and Raees Jamal, 23, were also sentenced to life after being found guilty of two murders. Raees Jamal must serve 31 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.
After the verdicts, the victims’ families shared their pain after their tragic losses.
Mr Ijazuddin’s family said in a statement: “Everyone who knew Hashim loved him. His death is a tremendous loss not only to our family, but to our entire community.
“On that tragic day he simply helped his friend and this resulted in his death. It has been extremely painful, not only to lose Hashim at such a young age, but also because of the circumstances in which we lost him.”
Mr Hussain’s family said they were “shattered” by the “senseless act” that took his life.
“We are still struggling to come to terms with the enormity of our loss,” they said. “I never imagined that I would have to bury one of my children, that every waking moment I would suddenly expect him to come back and tell me everything is okay, endlessly searching for his face whenever I am in public , even though I know it’s impossible.
“This grief over the loss of Saqib has been compounded by having to relive the horror of my son’s death in court again and again.”