A TikTok and Instagram star gave evidence today to deny murdering her mum’s lover who allegedly tried to blackmail them.
Mahek Bukhai, 23, is on trial with seven others including her mum, accused of killing two men who died when the car they were in hit a tree and caught fire near Leicester earlier this year.
Saqib Hussain and Mohammed Hashim Ijazuddin, both 21, were allegedly ambushed in a supermarket car park with the intention of taking a phone thought to have explicit photos and videos of Bukhari’s mother Ansreen, 47.
The men allegedly tried to escape up the A46 in a Skoda Fabia, with the jury hearing a 999 call from Saqib saying they were being rammed by two other vehicles.
Both men died when they crashed into the central reservation of the dual carriageway at around 1.30am on February 11.
Giving evidence today, Bukhari denied seeing men wearing balaclavas in a car park prior to a car chase which led to the Mr Hussian and Mr Ijazuddin’s deaths.
Prosecutors say Mr Hussain, from Banbury in Oxfordshire, was killed after threatening to expose his relationship with Ansreen Bukhari.
Mahek Bukhari, of Stoke-on-Trent, told Leicester Crown Court she met Mr Hussain at a London shisha bar in the summer of 2020 and her mother later admitted having an affair with him.
Wearing a white shirt and dark jacket, the fashion content creator and YouTuber told the jury: ‘At the beginning, she was denying it… then he started about, “I have sexual images of her”.
‘She told me about the relationship and how she wanted to end it. She said she made a mistake and she felt so bad about it.
‘Hearing that from my mum. It did break me.’
Answering questions from defence KC Christopher Millington, Bukhari said she blocked Mr Hussain’s account after coming to see him as mentally unstable and his behaviour towards her mother as ‘just vile’.
She added: ‘Every morning at breakfast, she (Ansreen) would just be crying in her room.
‘I advised her that the police would be the best way because you could get a restraint order.’
Mr Hussain was ‘demanding’ £2,000 and Mahek Bukhari drove to Leicestershire to meet him, along with others, the court heard.
Telling the court she drove in her Audi TT from Stoke to Leicester at up to 100mph because Mr Hussain ‘had already said he was going to come to my house’, she said: ‘Threats were being made. I had to make my way there as soon as possible.’
Bukhari, who described her mother as ‘like a sister to me’, said she pulled into a supermarket car park in Leicester, where a co-defendant asked to drive her car.
She denied seeing any men in balaclavas, and also denied there being any intention to attack or kill Mr Hussain.
Giving her account of the interaction between her Audi, which was being driven by a co-defendant, a Seat vehicle and the Skoda, which crashed, Bukhari said she did not see it leave the road.
Although she saw the Skoda go towards the central reservation, Bukhari said, she did not hear the sound of ‘any significant incident’.
After returning and seeing a car on fire, the defendant said, she did not want to ‘think the worst’ and returned to Stoke-on-Trent.
Mr Millington ended his questions by asking Bukhari: ‘Was there any plan as the cars proceeded along the A46 to ram the Skoda car?’
Bukhari said: ‘No.’
The defendants all deny two counts of murder each and alternative counts of manslaughter.
The trial continues.
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