A TikTok influencer has been found guilty of murdering her mum’s lover by ramming him off the road in a high-speed car chase after he blackmailed her with a sex tape.

Mahek Bukhari, 23, and mum Ansreen, 45, lured Saqib Hussain, 21, to a meeting where they hoped to buy his silence for the £3,000 he claimed to have spent on taking her out during their three-year affair.

With the help of six others, they also planned to ‘ambush’ him and force him to hand over the phone containing the explicit films and photos.

But when Mr Hussain and pal Hashim Ijazuddin, also 21, who drove him to the summit in Leicester late on February 11 last year, spotted two cars instead of one they drove off, pursued by the defendants.

Both men were killed shortly after when their Skoda left the A46 dual carriageway and smashed into a tree, ripping in half and bursting into flames.

In a frantic phone call made minutes before the crash, Mr Hussain told police they were being ‘rammed’ by balaclava-clad assailants.

He said: ‘They’re trying to ram us off the road. Please, I’m begging you, I’m going to die.’

Jurors at Leicester Crown Court heard his last words ‘Oh my God’ before there was a scream and the call cut off at the sound of an impact.

They deliberated for more than 28 hours before finding YouTube and TikTok content creator Mahek Bukhari and her mother guilty of two counts of murder on Friday afternoon.

Fellow defendants Rekhan Karwan and Raees Jamal were also found guilty of two counts of murder – while Natasha Akhtar, Ameer Jamal and Sanaf Gulamustafa were all found not guilty of murder, but guilty of two counts of manslaughter.

Mohammed Patel was found not guilty of murder or manslaughter.

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Collingwood Thompson KC, prosecuting, told jurors the 999 call proved the crash ‘was not simply a tragic road traffic accident but a deliberate murder’.

He said the subsequent investigation revealed ‘a story of love, anger, attempts at extortion and – ultimately – murder’.

The court heard Mr Hussain was having a three-year affair with Ansreen Bukhari, whom he knew as Anzy, and by the end of it had confided to his sister he ‘was in love with her’.

Over the course of their tryst, Mr Hussain’s family estimated he spent between £2,000 and £3,000 taking her out, meeting at hotels and dining in restaurants.

Mr Thompson said Mr Hussain had also recorded ‘sexually explicit’ material; both videos and photos, of the couple, later found on his Instagram account.

‘It is the existence of sexually explicit material that is at the centre of this case,’ he told jurors.

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By January 2022, Mrs Bukhari was trying to end the relationship, against Mr Hussain’s wishes, and he ‘became increasingly obsessive, professing his love for her… begging her to continue with the relationship’.

‘On the other hand, this alternated with messages showing anger and frustration she would not return his calls,’ said Mr Thompson.

The barrister went on: ‘That anger manifested itself in an attempt to blackmail Ansreen Bukhari in order to persuade her to contact him.

‘What he did was to threaten to send the sexually explicit material that existed on his Instagram to her husband, (and) to her son unless she agreed to speak to him.’

Jurors saw WhatsApp messages showing that by January 4 Mrs Bukhari had confided to her daughter about the blackmail attempt.

Setting out a possible motive to ‘silence’ Mr Hussain, Mr Thompson told them the explicit material could have ‘ruined’ Mrs Bukhari’s marriage and ‘damaged her reputation’.

He added that it ‘also would have affected Mahek’s relationship her father’.

‘Even more so, Mahek Bukhari was a social media influencer, very active,’ said Mr Thompson.

‘(She had a) large number of followers, TikTok and such, and revelation of the affair and her role in it might of course damage her standing with her (online) followers.’

On January 4, her daughter responded to her mother, saying: ‘I’ll soon get him jumped by guys and he won’t know what day it is.’

Mr Thompson told the jury: ‘Well, of course, subsequently, he (Mr Hussain) was indeed jumped by – mostly – guys and killed.’

Outlining the plot, the prosecutor said an agreement was initially allegedly struck with Mr Hussain for Mrs Bukhari to pay up to £3,000 for his silence about the affair.

But their problem would not have been solved completely because although he would have got the money, he still would have had possession of the films and photos ‘which in theory he could send any time’.

Mr Thompson went on: ‘It is clear that Mahek must have turned to one of her friends to assist, and that friend was Rekan Karwan.

‘The Crown infer Karwan must have then started speaking to others, who became involved: Raees Jamal, who was also known to Mahek Bukhari.

‘He (Jamal) in turn recruited others to help him, notably Natasha Akhtar whose car was used in course of that evening, and the car used, we say, to ram the Skoda Fabia.

‘Others became involved. Between them, the Crown allege, they set a trap.

‘The idea was to lure Saqib into a meeting, the lure being the promise to return the money and to see Ansreen Bukhari.

‘Once at that meeting he would then be confronted with numerical superiority and it is hoped, no doubt, he would hand his phone over.

‘The Crown case, as you may gather, is, however, if he was not willing to hand his phone over, they were prepared to cause him really serious injury to achieve their ends – if not to silence him permanently.’

Judge Timothy Spencer KC thanked the jury, made up of five men and seven women, for their ‘remarkable’ service and excused them from jury duty for the next 30 years.

The defendants will be sentenced on September 1.

Before remanding them into custody, the judge said: ‘You know the sentence will be very serious.’

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