R v Ansreen Buhari

On 4 August 2023, following a trial in the Crown Court at Leicester before His Honour Judge Spencer KC and a jury, the applicant, Ansreen Bukhari was convicted of two counts of murder.

There were seven co-accused. Raees Jamal, Rekan Kawan and Mahek Bukhari were also convicted of two counts of murder. Ameer Jamal, Sanaf Gulammustafa and Natasha Akhtar were acquitted of murder but convicted of two alternative counts of manslaughter. Mohammed Patel was acquitted of both murder and manslaughter.

On 1 September 2023, the trial judge sentenced the applicant and her co-accused as follows:

On 24 October 2025, this court allowed an appeal against the sentence imposed upon Mahek Bukhari: [2025] EWCA Crim 1353, by reducing her minimum term to 26 years and 285 days (based upon a minimum term of 28 years, less four months spent on a qualifying curfew and 332 days on remand in custody).

The applicant’s application for an extension of time (780 days) in which to apply for leave to appeal against her sentence has been referred to the full court by the Registrar.

The details of the offences are succinctly set out between [5] and [9] of the previous judgment of the court relating to Mahek Bukhari's appeal against sentence, and we gratefully adopt them for the purposes of dealing with this application.

The two deceased, Saqib Hussain and Hashim Ijazuddin, died in a car crash in the early hours of 11 February 2022. They were travelling in a Skoda car along the A46 dual carriageway. Hashim was driving, with Saqib in the front passenger seat. At about 1.28 am Saqib made a 999 call. The transcript includes him saying,

Investigation revealed that two other vehicles, an Audi TT and a Seat Leon, had been close to the Skoda at the time. The eight defendants had all been in the cars. The Bukharis and Patel were in the Audi, which was driven by Karwan. The others were in the Seat, which was driven by Raees Jamal. The prosecution case at trial was, in summary, that the Audi and the Seat had engaged in a co-ordinated high-speed pursuit of the Skoda which culminated in the Seat ramming it from behind and causing the crash.

The background, as presented by the prosecution, was that for some years leading up to January 2022, Saqib and the applicant, who was married, had been in a sexual relationship. When she ended it, Saqib was unable to accept her decision. He wanted the return of £3,000 that he claimed to have spent on her. He had three sexually explicit videos and images of her in his possession and was blackmailing her by threatening to reveal the relationship and the images. Prompted by these matters, the applicant's daughter, Mahek Bukhari, formed a plan reflected in a message she sent on 4 January 2022. The message read: "I'll soon get him jumped by guys and he won't know what day it is". By early February 2022, the defendants had all become party to an agreement that Saqib should be attacked. A plan was formed to lure him to a meeting in a Tesco carpark in Leicester, on the promise that he would be given back his money. The two vehicles would be there, with the eight individuals in them. The aim was to obtain the phone and delete the photos and to give Saqib "a good hiding".

The two vehicles went to the carpark. Six of the occupants were in possession of face coverings in the form of balaclavas or masks. Saqib arrived with his friend Hashim, who was the owner of the Skoda. Hashim's role in these events was simply to give his friend a lift. There were calls between Mahek Bukhari and Saqib and, in the event, Saqib and Hashim drove away from the carpark without stopping. They realised that they had been set up.

The defendants followed in the Audi and the Seat. They communicated with one another via a phone line between the two cars that remained open for 14 minutes. The prosecution invited the inference that the phones were being used to co-ordinate the defendants' movements to stop the Skoda, firstly by boxing it in, and when that failed to ram the Skoda off the road, which was then executed with fatal results. A salient feature of the prosecution case was a three-minute call from the applicant's phone to the phone of Hashim, which began at 1.24 am and ended at 1.27 am, less than a minute before the 999 call. The prosecution case was that this was a call from Mahek to Saqib, of a threatening nature.

To prove the case the prosecution relied on a combination of direct and circumstantial evidence. The main strands were: (1) evidence of the relationship between the applicant and Saqib and messages he had sent her after the break-up; (2) messages Mahek Bukhari had sent in January 2022 that indicated a desire for retribution; (3) a sequence of events compiled from call data, messages, emails, telematics, ANPR and CCTV; (4) Saqib's 999 call; and (5) the evidence of a forensic collision investigator. The investigator said, in summary, that the most likely cause of the crash was some external influence such as a collision with another vehicle; that the cars had been travelling at speeds well beyond the limit – up to 89 miles per hour in the case of the Skoda and 97 miles per hour in the case of the Audi; and that the evidence indicated the likely collision was between the front of the Seat and the rear of the Skoda, before the Skoda went out of control and hit the tree. In addition, reliance was placed on DNA evidence from a forensic scientist; evidence of what were said to be weapons in the two cars: a wheel brace and a curved pointed metal tool; and recorded prison telephone calls. None of the defendants called for help. They put forward innocent accounts which, the prosecution said, were concocted in an attempt to avoid responsibility.

The applicant was 45 years of age at the time of the offences, having been born on 15 November 1976, and is now 48. Prior to these offences she had no previous convictions.

It was common ground that for the purposes of determining the minimum term for murder, under section 321 of the Sentencing Act 2020, as the case involved the murder of two persons, the appropriate starting point under paragraph 3 of Schedule 21 was 30 years.

The aggravating factors generic to the offenders included their failure to summon assistance for the deceased, and their attempts to cover up the offences. However, although the judge considered that the deceased knew that they were going to die, "and that clearly haunts their families", this did not amount to mental or physical suffering inflicted on the victims before their death.

In so far as mitigation was concerned, the judge was not satisfied that the offenders intended to kill the deceased, as opposed to intending that they should suffer serious bodily harm.

In so far as Raees Jamal and Mahek Bukhari were concerned, the judge considered that their role in the offences involved a significant degree of planning.

In contrast, the judge considered that in the cases of the applicant and Rekan Karwan, "The degree of planning attributable to you two was significantly less than those who have gone before you".

The trial judge went on to make the following observations in relation to the applicant:

On behalf of the applicant, Mr Millington KC, to whom we are extremely grateful for the clarity of his submissions, points out that as a result of her recent successful appeal against sentence, Mahek Bukhari's minimum term has been reduced to a period only one year more than that imposed upon the applicant, despite the judge having been satisfied that in contrast to her daughter, the applicant's degree of planning was significantly less.

Mr Millington submits that this is a factor which ought to be borne in mind when considering whether it is in the interests of justice to grant the long extension of time required to enable this court to grant leave to appeal. In addition he submits that, having erroneously fixed the minimum term above 30 years in the case of Mahek Bukhari, the judge may have applied an inappropriate upward adjustment to the length of the applicant's minimum term.

Moreover, he submits that the judge failed to give sufficient or any weight to the effect upon the applicant of the background of blackmail by Saqib, or to the other mitigating factors relating to the applicant, namely: (1) that she was not a prominent or leading member of the group; (2) that she made no threatening calls to Saqib; (3) that she was not involved in any planning, nor did she make any direct threats; (4) that she was collected by her daughter that night from the gym; (5) that she provided her correct mobile phone number and PIN to the police; (6) that she told Saqib she wanted to finish on good terms; and (7) that Mohammed Patel, a passenger in the applicant's vehicle throughout the pursuit (and who was acquitted of all offences), described the applicant in cross-examination as "mainly silent throughout the whole thing", "apart from when she started weeping" and that after the crash the applicant "had her head in her hands".

In all of those circumstances, Mr Millington submits that the minimum term is manifestly excessive and that not only should the extension of time be allowed, but that leave to appeal should be granted, the appeal should be allowed, and the minimum term should be reduced.

As Mr Millington recognised in the course of the hearing, the reason for this court reducing the minimum term in the case of Mehek Bukhari was its determination that the judge had failed sufficiently to reflect her age and level of maturity in his assessment of the minimum term. As Warby LJ said at [20], after rejecting other grounds of appeal:

That comment is self-evidently not a factor which can be prayed in aid on behalf of the applicant in this case. As the sentencing judge rightly observed when he addressed the applicant:

Therefore, there is nothing surprising about the fact that the applicant, despite being significantly less involved in the planning of these offences than her daughter, has ended up with a minimum term which is only a year less than that imposed upon her daughter. It neither explains the delay in the applicant seeking leave to appeal against her sentence, nor does it afford a ground for reducing her minimum term.

Moreover, we are quite satisfied that the underestimation as to the effect which Mahek Bukhari's age and immaturity had upon her culpability did not apply some unjustified upward pressure on the length of the minimum term for the other accused, including the applicant. On the contrary, the judge correctly identified the appropriate starting point for the minimum term, which was not in dispute, and thereafter made an individual assessment of the aggravating and mitigating factors relating to each of those involved.

However, regardless of this, we have considered the other proposed grounds of appeal advanced on behalf of the applicant. We do so in light of the fact that the judge, having presided over the trial, was particularly well-placed to assess the factual circumstances which gave rise to these offences and the effect that this had on the relative culpability of those involved.

In this regard, the judge was clearly aware of the background which had given rise to these offences, namely the break-up of the relationship between the applicant and Saqib and the nature of his subsequent actions towards the applicant. However, as the judge observed, instead of resorting to violence, the applicant had many opportunities to prevent the escalation of the events which led to the death of the deceased. Moreover, as the judge also observed:

In these circumstances, we are satisfied that to the extent that Saqib's actions provided any mitigation in this case, it was of limited value and had been adequately taken into account by the judge in his assessment of the minimum term.

In relation to the other factors of mitigation, to which it is submitted the judge gave insufficient weight, nearly all of these are matters which evidenced the applicant's comparative lack of involvement in the planning of these offences, which the judge had already accepted was significantly less than that of either Mahek Bukhari or Raees Jamal. Moreover, given the applicant's actions and attitude following the incident, we do not consider that the fact that the applicant may have had her head in her hands is evidence of any significant remorse on her part.

However, in the light of all the matters advanced on behalf of the applicant by Mr Millington, we have stood back and considered whether they were overall sufficiently reflected in the applicant's minimum term.

Having done so, we note that the applicant was a central figure in the events out of which these offences took place, and we are quite satisfied that the minimum term properly took into account all of the matters that had been advanced by Mr Millington on her behalf this morning.

Accordingly, we refuse the application for an extension of time and for leave to appeal.