Social media influencer Mahek Bukhari had more than 120,000 followers on TikTok, where she shared regular fashion updates, occasionally appearing with her mother Ansreen Bukhari.
But after the glamour of online stardom, the pair are now facing lengthy jail terms after they were convicted of murdering two young men during a high-speed car chase.
Saqib Hussain was threatening to send sex tapes to Ansreen’s husband if she did not pay back the £3,000 he had spent on dates with her.
The mother and daughter “set a trap”, a court was told, by arranging “an ambush” meeting in a supermarket car park in Leicester, where the women arrived in an Audi with other people they knew in a Saab.
Mr Hussain and his friend Mohammed Hashim Ijazuddin, also 21, did not get out of their Skoda and when they left were followed by the other cars.
By the time the two men, from Banbury, Oxfordshire, reached the A46 duel carriageway, the Audi had reached speeds of almost 100mph.
“They’re trying to ram us off the road,” Mr Hussain is heard saying in a panicked 999 call played to jurors during the Bukharis’ trial. “Please, I’m begging you, I’m going to die.” There is a scream before the call cuts out at the sound of a loud bang.
Image: Saqib Hussain, 21, had been in a relationship with 46-year-old Ansreen Bukhari
The vehicle “virtually split in two” and caught fire after hitting a tree at the Six Hills junction near Leicester just after midnight on 11 February 2022, a jury was told.
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When the police came to her house, Mahek lied about where she had been on the night of the crash, claiming: “First we stayed here and then we went straight to Nottingham.”
Image: Mohammed Hashim Ijazuddin was in the passenger seat of Saqib Hussain’s car
After her arrest, she changed her story, admitting she was on the road that night, but telling officers in an interview: “As soon as I turn around the silver car is gone.
“The silver car swerved, to not my side, to the other side of the duel carriageway… I didn’t see the car, I didn’t see a bang.”
During her trial, Mahek admitted she had repeatedly lied to police.
Leicestershire Police’s Detective Inspector Mark Parish said: “I think sometimes it’s been very hard for the families to grasp, to hear different accounts. No real admission of guilt or feelings for the lads that died.”
The actor who played PC Reg Hollis in hit TV series The Bill has been praised by officers after helping them arrest a shoplifter.
Jeff Stewart stepped in when a thief attempted to escape on a bicycle in Southampton on Wednesday.
In a statement, a Hampshire Constabulary spokesman said: “The thief, 29-year-old Mohamed Diallo, fell off the bike during his attempts to flee, before officers pounced to make their arrest.
“To their surprise, local TV legend Jeff Stewart, who played PC Hollis for 24 years in The Bill, came to their aid by sitting on the suspect’s legs while officers put him in cuffs.
Image: (L-R) Jeff Stewart, Roberta Taylor, Mark Wingett, Trudie Goodwin and Cyril Nri celebrating The Bill’s 21st anniversary in 2004. Pic: PA
“In policing you should always expect the unexpected, but this really wasn’t on The Bill for this week.”
The Bill was broadcast on ITV between 1984 and 2010 and featured the fictional lives of police officers from the Sun Hill police station in east London.
Mr Stewart, who was among the original cast, appeared in more than 1,000 episodes as PC Hollis.
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Image: Police released footage showing their pursuit of a shoplifter in Southampton. Pic: Hampshire Constabulary
Image: As the suspect falls to the floor, PC Hollis (aka Jeff Stewart) sits on his legs. Pic: Hampshire Constabulary
In praising Mr Stewart’s actions, the force said: “Long since retired from Sun Hill station – but he’s still got it.”
Police from the Bargate Neighbourhoods Policing Team were alerted by staff at a Co-op store in Ocean Way to a suspected shoplifter on Wednesday.
Mohamed Diallo, 29, of Anglesea Road, Southampton, was subsequently charged with five offences of theft relating to coffee, alcohol and food from the Co-op and two other Sainsbury’s stores on three dates in April and July.
He pleaded guilty at Southampton Magistrates’ Court on Thursday and was bailed to be sentenced on August 29.
It was a cold, typically rainy Manchester evening, October 1993, when Michael Spencer Jones set out to meet a new guitar band he had been commissioned to photograph.
The weather was miserable, he didn’t know their music, wasn’t totally in the mood. “I had to drag myself from home, thinking: is it going to be worth the trouble?”
On the drive to the Out Of The Blue studio in Ancoats, on the outskirts of the city centre, a song he’d never heard before came on the local radio station. “It was like, wow, what is that?” The track was Columbia, by Oasis, the band he was on his way to meet.
Spencer Jones had previously met Noel Gallagher during the musician’s time as a roadie for fellow Manchester band Inspiral Carpets. But not Liam.
“As a photographer, obviously, the aesthetic of a band is massively important,” he says as he recalls that first shoot. “I’m just looking down the camera lens with a certain amount of disbelief.”
In front of him was a 21-year-old, months before the start of the fame rollercoaster that lay ahead. And yet. “I was looking at a face that just seemed to embody the quality of stardom.”
It was the start of a partnership that continued throughout the band’s heyday, with Spencer Jones shooting the covers for their first three albums, their most successful records, and the singles that went with them.
“You work with bands pre-fame and there’s always that question: are they going to make it? With Oasis there was never that question. Their success was inevitable.”
There was a confidence, even in those early days. “Incredible, intoxicating confidence. [They were] not interested in any kind of social norms or social constraints.”
It wasn’t arrogance, he says, of a criticism sometimes levelled at the Gallaghers. “They just had this enormous self-belief.”
Spencer Jones was one of several photographers who followed the band, capturing the moments that became part of rock history.
Jill Furmanovsky, who started working with Oasis towards the end of 1994, a few months after the release of debut album Definitely Maybe, says Noel always seemed aware their time together should be documented.
“An uncanny intuition, really, that it was important,” she says. “I think Noel has been aware right from the start, because for him that’s what he used to look at when he used to buy his Smiths records or Leo Sayer or whatever, he would stare at the covers and be fascinated by the pictures.”
Contrary to popular belief, Furmanovsky says the brothers got on fairly well most of the time, “otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to function”.
She picks one shoot in 1997, around the release of their third album, Be Here Now, as one of the more memorable ones. Noel had shared his thoughts about the band on a chalkboard and “they were having such a laugh.”
But when things did erupt, it became significant. “There were tensions in some shoots but they never started hitting each other in front of me or anything like that. I used to complain about it, actually – ‘don’t leave me out of those pictures where you’re really arguing!’.”
In Paris in 1995, tensions had boiled over. “It’s one of my favourites,” she says of the shoot. “It reflects not just the band but the family situation, these brothers in a strop with each other.”
What is notable, she says, is that they were happy for photographers to take candid shots, not just set up pictures to show them “looking cool”. Pictures that on the surface might sound mundane, showing “what they were really like – tensions, mucking about, sometimes yawning… This was the genius of Noel and [former Oasis press officer] Johnny Hopkins.”
Furmanovsky also notes the women who worked behind the scenes for Oasis – unusual at a time when the industry was even more male-dominated than it is now – and how they kept them in line.
“They got on well working with women,” she says. “Maggie Mouzakitis was their tour manager for ages and was so young, but she ruled. For a band one could say were a bunch of macho Manchester blokes, they had a lot of women working in senior positions.”
This is down to the influence of their mum, Peggy, she adds. “Absolutely crucial.”
Furmanovsky has been working with Noel on an upcoming book documenting her time with the band, and says she initially wanted to start with a picture of the Gallagher matriarch. “Noel said to me, ‘Jill, you do know she wasn’t actually in the band?'”
Touring with Oasis – ‘the journalist had to take a week off’
Kevin Cummins was commissioned to take pictures when Oasis signed to Creation Records, and it “kind of spiralled out of control a little bit”, he laughs.
“I photographed them for NME, gave them their first cover. I photographed them in Man City shirts because we were all Man City fans, and City were at the time sponsored by a Japanese electronics company, Brother. It seemed a perfect fit.”
The early days documenting the band were “fairly riotous”, he says. “They were quite young, they were obviously enjoying being in the limelight.
“I remember we went on tour with them for three days for an NME ‘on the road’ piece, and the journalist who came with me had to take a week off afterwards.
“I dipped in and out of tours occasionally – I’ve always done that with musicians because I cannot imagine spending more than about seven or eight days on tour with somebody, it would drive you nuts. They’re so hedonistic, especially in the early days. It’s very, very difficult to keep up.”
Cummins says the relationship between Noel and Liam was “like anybody’s relationship, if you’ve got a younger brother – he’d get on your nerves.”
During the shoot for the City shirt pictures, he says, “Liam kicked a ball at Noel, Noel pushed him, Liam pushed him back. They have a bit of a pushing match and then they stop and they get on with it.”
Another time, following a show in Portsmouth, “as soon as we got [to the hotel] after the gig, Liam threw all the plastic furniture in the pool. Noel looked at him and said, ‘where are we going to sit?’ And he made him get in the pool and get all the furniture out. So there were like attempts at being rock and roll, and not quite getting it right sometimes.”
Cummins says he has “very affectionate” memories of working with Oasis. “I’ve got a lot of very sensitive looking pictures of Liam and people are really surprised when they see them,” he says. “But he is a very sensitive lad… it’s just he was irritating because he was younger and he wanted to make himself heard.”
All three photographers have yet to see the reunion show, but all have tickets. All say the announcement last summer came as a surprise.
“There was an inkling of it, I suppose, just in the thawing of the comments between the brothers, but I still wouldn’t have guessed it,” says Furmanovsky, who has a book out later this year, and whose pictures feature in the programme. “It’s wonderful they have pulled it off with such conviction and passion.”
Cummins’ work can be seen in a free outdoor exhibition at Wembley Park, which fans will be able to see throughout the summer until the final gigs there in September.
“I think the atmosphere at the gigs seems to have been really friendly… I like the idea that people are taking their kids and they’re passing the baton on a little bit,” he says. “Everyone’s just having a blast and it’s like the event of the summer – definitely something we need at the moment.”
Spencer Jones, who released his second Oasis book, Definitely Maybe – A View From Within, for the album’s 30th anniversary last year – adds: “They really seem to be capturing a new generation of fans and I don’t think a band has ever done that [to this extent] before. Bands from 20, 30 years ago normally just take their traditional fanbase with them.”
But he says his first thought when the reunion was announced was for the Gallaghers’ mum, Peggy. “I think for any parent, to have two children who don’t talk is pretty tough,” he says. “It’s that notion of reconciliation – if they can do it, anyone can do it.
“The fact they’re walking on stage, hands clasped together, there’s a huge amount of symbolism there that transcends Oasis and music. Especially in a fractured society, that unity is inspiring. Everyone’s had a bit of a rough time since COVID, battle weary with life itself. I think people generally are just gagging to have some fun.”
Brothers: Liam And Noel Through The Lens Of Kevin Cummins is on at Wembley Park until 30 September. Definitely Maybe – A View From Within, by Michael Spencer Jones, available through Spellbound Galleries, is out now. Oasis: Trying To Find A Way Out Of Nowhere, by Jill Furmanovsky and edited by Noel Gallagher, published by Thames & Hudson, is out from 23 September.
It was “shadowy” of the government to reveal Angela Rayner warned about the threat to social cohesion in a “readout”, Harriet Harman has said.
On Wednesday, Downing Street released a “cabinet readout” saying the deputy prime minister told ministers the government “had to show it had a plan to address people’s concerns” to defuse community tensions.
She said immigration was having a “profound impact on society” and noted 17 out of 18 places where protests broke out last summer after kicking off in Southport were the most deprived areas in Britain.
This was widely interpreted as a warning that riots could happen this summer.
But Baroness Harman told Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast that announcing it in a “readout” – given to journalists after a cabinet meeting – was not the way to do things.
“These are quite huge issues – the potential for disorder, social integration, the public mood, and ahead of summer,” the Labour peer said.
“I don’t know whether I’m just a bit old-fashioned about this, but I think it’s better when government are making statements like that they give people an opportunity to ask questions rather than this kind of sort of rather shadowy way of doing it.”
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Essex Police chief denies Farage claims
The former minister added that cabinet meetings are supposed to be secret so that everybody around the table can speak and say “anything they want because there is this protected thing”.
“You don’t say what’s happening at cabinet,” she added.
“And if anybody asks in the House of Commons or anywhere else, what happened in cabinet, the automatic response is ‘we don’t talk about what’s happened in cabinet, it’s private’. And they’ve sort of slightly breached that now.
“So is it now a situation where anybody can be asked, what did somebody say in cabinet?
“Or is it only that the prime minister can say what happened in cabinet?
“It’s a bit puzzling.”
Baroness Harman’s comments came after protests in Epping last week outside a hotel housing asylum seekers turned violent.
More than 1,000 people gathered outside The Bell Hotel in protests over two nights after an asylum seeker was arrested and charged on suspicion of alleged sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl in the town.
Counter-protesters joined, and this week Reform UK leader Nigel Farage accused Essex Police of bussing them in, which the force said was “categorically wrong”.