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 her involvement in 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 at the Court of Appeal 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 her 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 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.
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.
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.
He 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, 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.
Balraj Bhatia KC, for Akhtar and Gulamustafa, said that the three played a “minor role” in the offending and were “incapable of doing anything to reduce the obvious risk” of cars travelling at high speed.
In the ruling, Lord Justice Warby said: “It seems to us indisputable that the car chase carried a high risk of death or really serious harm and that this should have been obvious to all those in each car.”
But he continued that the “minor role played by each” of them should have had a “powerful downward impact” on the sentences, and reduced each by two years.
He said: “In our view, the judge erred in striking the overall balance of aggravation and mitigation.”
He continued: “The sentences for all these appellants were manifestly excessive. They could and should have been substantially lower.”
