A \u201cself-obsessed\u201d TikTok influencer has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 31 years and eight months for her part in the murder of two men who died in a fireball when their car was rammed off the road during a high-speed chase outside Leicester.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mahek Bukhari, 24, blew a kiss to her father as she was jailed alongside her mother, Ansreen Bukhari, who was sentenced to a minimum term of 26 years and nine months for the double murder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A three-month trial at Leicester crown court heard that the pair were part of a group who lured the victims to a Tesco car park in February last year before pursuing them at speeds of up to 100mph.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Saqib Hussain and Mohammed Hashim Ijazuddin, both 21, from Banbury in Oxfordshire, died instantly when their car was rammed off the road, hit a tree and went up in flames.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Co-defendants Rekhan Karwan, 29, and Raees Jamal, 23, were also jailed for life, with minimum terms of 26 years and 10 months and 31 years respectively, for two counts of murder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Natasha Akhtar, 23, was jailed for 11 years and eight months, and Ameer Jamal, 28, and Sanaf Gulamustafa, 23, were jailed for 14 years and eight months and 14 years and nine months respectively for two counts of manslaughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Passing sentence on Friday afternoon, the judge Timothy Spencer KC said Mahek Bukhari\u2019s \u201ctawdry fame\u201d through her career as an influencer had made her \u201cutterly self-obsessed\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTikTok and Instagram are at the heart of this case,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is the reason you, Mahek, dropped out of university. Had you not done so, you would now be a young graduate with your whole life ahead of you. Now, you constrain yourself to prison for all of your best years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said Ansreen Bukhari\u2019s \u201chead was turned\u201d by the \u201cperceived glamour\u201d of the influencer world. \u201cA world far removed from the life you lived until then as a mother and housewife in Stoke-on-Trent,\u201d he said, that led to her starting an affair with Hussain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trial heard that Hussain reacted badly when Ansreen tried to end their relationship, threatening to send sexually explicit photos to her husband if she did not repay him \u00a33,000 he claimed he had spent on her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the early hours of 11 February last year, Mahek arranged to meet Hussain at a car park in Leicester under the pretence of giving him the money, and arrived as part of a group of eight people. Many were wearing face coverings and at least one person was carrying a weapon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Hussain and his close friend Ijazuddin, who had offered to give him a lift, arrived at the car park they quickly fled the scene, and they were pursued by the group at high speed, leading to the fatal crash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a 999 call made by Hussain in the moments before his death, he said: \u201cThere\u2019s guys following me. They\u2019ve got balaclavas on. They\u2019re trying to ram me off the road. They\u2019re trying to kill me \u2013 I\u2019m going to die.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spencer described the call as \u201cone of the most moving and distressing pieces of evidence ever heard in a criminal court\u201d. He said Ijazuddin was \u201ctotally innocent\u201d and \u201cfound himself sucked into a deadly maelstrom caused by all of you in the dock\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a statement read in court, Ijazuddin\u2019s father, Sikandar Hayat, said: \u201cMy heart has been ripped out and none of us will be the same again. All we have left is memories of our beloved son. They left him and his friend to burn in a furnace of hell.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hussain\u2019s father, Sajad Hussain, said his son \u201cbrought light into the lives of everyone who knew him\u201d and the \u201cwhole family has been torn apart\u201d by his death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Patrick Upward KC, defending Ansreen Bukhari, said she did not know four of the other defendants and claimed that \u201calthough plans had clearly been made, Ansreen was not preparing to take part in them\u201d. He said: \u201cShe will have to spend the rest of her life living in the shadow of her shame.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Defending Mahek Bukhari, Christopher Millington KC said <\/strong>\u201cdecisions were taken and intentions were formed on the spur of the moment\u201d during the car journey, and \u201cthe evidence does not establish an intention to kill\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spencer said none of the defendants called for help after the crash and they were concerned only with trying to \u201cavoid responsibility\u201d. \u201cSo whilst remorse is expressed by some, it is little and late and has a hollow ring,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A \u201cself-obsessed\u201d TikTok influencer has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 31 years and eight months for her part in the murder of two men who died in a fireball when their car was rammed off the road during a high-speed chase outside Leicester. Mahek Bukhari, 24, blew a kiss to her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":37382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[7220,13175,12689,7960,2152,10507,8193,7234,10505,5241,9478,5455,9127,5184,1444,9372,11166,8394,12005,301,11341,12309,5612,5382,7968,12454,11973,5911,8306,10722,11307,9023,8962,7592,11581,3080,214,6348,9539,36,594,5140],"class_list":["post-37381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-affair","tag-car","tag-car-park","tag-case","tag-chase","tag-court","tag-crash","tag-death","tag-die","tag-died","tag-dropped","tag-family","tag-february","tag-flames","tag-hell","tag-influencer","tag-innocent","tag-instagram","tag-judge","tag-leicester","tag-manslaughter","tag-men","tag-money","tag-murder","tag-nine","tag-obsessed","tag-one","tag-patrick","tag-prison","tag-removed","tag-sentence","tag-tesco","tag-tik-toe","tag-tiktok","tag-trial","tag-united-kingdom","tag-university","tag-us","tag-victims","tag-world","tag-who","tag-young"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37383,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37381\/revisions\/37383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}