Mum of TikToker has murder sentence appeal rejected

Mum of TikToker has murder sentence appeal rejected

Conviction and Sentence Details

Mum of TikToker has murder sentence - In February 2022, Ansreen Bukhari—mother of TikTok influencer Mahek Bukhari—was found guilty of the murder of Saqib Hussain and Hashim Ijazuddin. She shared the conviction with her daughter and two other men. The court sentenced her to 26 years and nine months, but an appeal to lessen her punishment was dismissed by a panel of three judges at the Court of Appeal. The judges ruled the sentence was fair, despite claims that the judge overlooked Ansreen’s experiences of coercive control by Hussain.

James Millington KC, representing Ansreen, argued that the sentencing judge had "set the bar too high" in determining her culpability. He emphasized that Hussain had subjected Ansreen to a "relentless campaign of blackmail and coercive behaviour" in the weeks before the fatal car crash. Millington noted that the police had received reports of similar controlling actions from an unrelated woman, adding that Ansreen had "many opportunities to stop the escalation of events" but chose to pursue the plot.

“Having determined that she wanted to end the relationship, telling the deceased that she wanted to end it on good terms, the answer to that was plainly no,” Millington said. “Thereafter, and over a period of many, many weeks leading up to these offences, there was what we would categorise as a relentless campaign of blackmail and coercive behaviour from Saqib Hussain towards Ansreen Bukhari.”

The trial revealed Hussain had been "lured" into meeting the Bukharis under the pretense of recovering £3,000 he claimed to have spent on taking his lover out. Jurors were informed that Hussain used three explicit videos of Ansreen to threaten her after their relationship ended. The ambush occurred at a Tesco car park in Hamilton, Leicester, where Hussain and Ijazuddin were chased by two vehicles. The crash at Six Hills junction on the A46 left Ijazuddin’s car split in two and ignited a fire, killing both men.

During the three-month trial, the court highlighted that Hussain had also threatened to expose his affair with Ansreen using sexually explicit material in the months before the murders. Mahek Bukhari, who had nearly 129,000 followers on TikTok for fashion and beauty content, was found guilty of murder in August 2023. Her minimum sentence was later reduced from 32 years to 27 years after a separate appeal. Meanwhile, other defendants faced varied outcomes: Rekhan Karwan and Raees Jamal were convicted of murder, while Natasha Akhtar, Ameer Jamal, and Sanaf Gulamustafa were cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter. Mohammed Patel was not guilty of either charge.