by “To the woman who gave birth to me, I am so grateful,” the 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 showing a picture of her and her mother inside a heart.
Posted on 19 January 2022, less than a month later the two women would be implicated in a murder plot that left two 21-year-old men dead.
Before her arrest, Mahek Bukhari had achieved fame as an online personality, sharing make-up and lifestyle tips as well as fashion advice. With almost 130,000 followers on TikTok, 45,000 on Instagram and 3,900 subscribers on her YouTube channel, Mahek was starting to make a name for herself outside of her immediate circle.
A scroll down her social media platforms reveals a fashion graduate with many friends, who spent her weekend partying in Manchester and dancing to 10-second music clips in her family bedroom.
Her 46-year-old mother, Ansreen Bukhari, is seen alongside her regularly. In one video, the two women can be seen dancing with each other at their family home in Stoke-on-Trent.
But what appeared to be a close family bond took a turn for the worse in February 2022, becoming “a story of love, obsession, extortion and, in the end – cold-blooded murder”.
Three years earlier, Ansreen had started a secret relationship with a younger man that only her daughter knew about. Despite the matter starting out “a bit of fun”, Saqib Hussain quickly fell in love with the elderly woman and spent thousands of pounds on her.
However, Ansreen had been married for over two decades and had no intention of leaving her husband. By January 2022, she wanted to end the relationship against her younger lover’s wishes, with Hussain becoming increasingly obsessive.
The encounter between the two took a toll, and Hussain became frustrated when Bukhari stopped returning his calls. 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.
With the whirlwind romance soon becoming a nightmare, Ansreen turned to her daughter for advice and help. In one ominous Whatsapp message, Mahek said: “Soon I’ll be jumping with guys and he won’t know what day it is.”
It was from there that a drastic plan was set up to silence Hussain, by any means necessary and regardless of the cost.
An agreement was initially reached that Ms Bukhari would pay her ex-lover up to £3,000 for his silence on the matter. The deal remained problematic, however, because the two women would have no confirmation that Hussain had deleted the sexually explicit images from their devices after the payment.
It was at this point that Mahek turned to her friend, 28-year-old Rekan Karwan, for help. After that, he recruited several other people who could all take their part in setting a trap for Hussain, hoping that they could, by sheer numbers, force him to hand over his phone. .
Before midnight, on 11 February 2022, Hussain traveled with his childhood friend, Mohammed Hashim Ijazuddin, to Leicester to meet the two women under false pretenses.
Footage from the Tesco car park showed Hussain and Ijazuddin not getting out of their Skoda Fabia, and the prosecution alleged that they became increasingly suspicious.
Soon after, they were seen leaving the car park with a Seat Leon and an Audi TT on a high speed chase, with Mr Karwan and another accomplice, Raees Jamal, behind the wheel.
In his final moments, Hussain made a desperate 999 call in which he was heard saying: “I’m being followed by two vehicles. They are trying to block me. They are wearing balaclavas.
“They want to take my prey off the road. They want to kill me. I will die.”
A short scream followed, with a crashing sound before the call ended abruptly.
The dramatic crash resulted in Hussain and his friend Ijazuddin being caught in a fireball after they drove their vehicle off the A46 dual carriageway.
Police footage taken at 1.35am showed the Skoda in flames and leaning against the tree at the Six Hills junction. Both men were identified by their dental records after being caught in the fire.
When arrested, those involved claimed that their motive behind the 100mph chase was to stop the Skoda so that the women could have a conversation with Hussain. They also provided conflicting claims that they were traveling to a shisha bar in Nottingham and did not intend for the car to run off the road.
During the trial, Mahek admitted that she had previously lied to the police and a jury about the events on the A46, and claimed that there were reasons for her false statements and that she had entered the wrong PIN available for her phone due to “panic”.
Bukhari was jailed for life 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.
Sentencing, Judge Timothy Spencer KC said Bukhari had a “reputable” social media influence that she was “completely self-obsessed, with a completely unjustified sense of entitlement, and no apparent awareness on the impact you have on others, not forgetting the damage. You do”.
He added: “The prosecution was right to categorize this case as a cold-blooded murder.”
Co-defendants Rekhan Karwan, 29, and Raees Jamal, 23, were also sentenced to life after being found guilty of two counts of murder. 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 found not guilty of murder, but guilty of two counts of murder.
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.
Speaking after the trial verdict, the families of the victims shared their grief at their tragic loss.
Mr Ijazuddin’s family said in a statement: “Hashim was loved by everyone who knew him. His death is not only a huge loss to our family but also to our entire community.
“On that tragic day, he was just helping his friend and he died as a result. It was extremely painful not only to lose Hashim at such a young age but also in the circumstances in which we lost him.”
Mr Hussain’s family said they were “shocked” by the “senseless act” that killed him.
“We are still struggling to come to grips with the enormity of what we have lost,” they said. “I never dreamed that I would have to bury one of my children, that I would spend every waking moment suddenly hoping that he would come back and tell me that everything is okay, searching for his face endlessly without stopping any once in public although I know impossible.
“This grief of losing Saqib was made even worse by having to relive the horror of my son’s death over and over again in court.”
