Who are the South Asian Contestants on The Traitors?

Series three of BBC’s The Traitors premiered on January 1, 2025, with a new batch of contestants playing the ultimate game of detection, backstabbing and trust, in a bid to win up to £250,000.

Hidden among the contestants are the Traitors whose job is to secretly murder their fellow players, without getting caught.

It’s up to the others, the Faithful, to try to detect who the traitors are and banish them from the game before they become their next victim.

For the lucky ones who survive to the end, they have the chance of winning that life-changing cash. But if a Traitor remains undetected, they’ll take it all.

Series two saw Harry Clark triumph.

Among the series three contestants are two British South Asians – Fozia and Kasim.

Let’s find out more about them.

Fozia

Fifty-year-old Fozia is a community development manager from Birmingham.

Revealing that being on The Traitors was on her bucket list, she explained:

“I have been watching all the previous series, and it’s not like any other programme.

“There are other shows where the game is answering general knowledge questions, and then you win a prize. Whereas this one was more strategic, psychological, it’s twisted and I love it.”

Fozia said she wants to be a Faithful but is keeping an open mind as she hopes to bring some fun to the show.

On her game plan, Fozia said she will gain the trust of her fellow contestants but be wary of what she discusses.

“I’ll go in and make friends, and make sure that I can be trusted, I’d be myself, talk about stuff outside of work, show some level of compassion, you know, I want them to see the real me.

“But at the same time, I want to be strategic about it because you can’t trust anyone.

“I am going to be careful about what I share and don’t share. And normally I can smell a rat.”

Although she wants to be a Faithful, Fozia will happily “embrace” being a Traitor.

The Traitors is about deception and Fozia believes spotting this is one of her strengths, “especially someone’s who’s two-faced”.

She added:

“Yeah, I’ve met a few snakes in my time.”

On what she would do with the prize money if she won, Fozia said:

“I could do with a new set of veneers.

“But now on a serious note, I’ve got two, I say kids, but they’re adults, and they need to fly the nest.

“South Asian weddings, they cost a bomb. If it’s up to my dad he’s going to invite the postman and the local councillor!

“The prize money would help with paying for my kids’ weddings, paying the mortgage off and I’m 50 so I want to kind of retire early.”

Kasim

Also hoping to win The Traitors is 33-year-old Kasim.

The Cambridge-based doctor said he applied for the show because “it looked like great fun”.

Kasim actually applied for series two but never heard anything back. He tried his luck again for series three and was successful.

Speaking about what he will bring to the game, Kasim said:

“I’m quite a happy-go-lucky, bubbly person, I very much go with the flow.

“I’m quite open, quite honest, very happy to talk to anyone about any issues that come up and it’s part and parcel of what I do.

“However, when I get competitive, a very different side of me comes out. I can be quite ruthless, cunning and tactical.”

“Generally, if I’m playing things like board games, I will absolutely stab you in the back to get what I want.”

Kasim has several game plan ideas but it “depends on whether I’m a Faithful or a Traitor, and what the other people are like”.

If he is a Faithful, Kasim said: “It’s really easy to say that you just have to fly under the radar because you don’t know what the radar is going to be like.

“There has to be a degree of playing up your uselessness or being useful in the right way.

“I think there are advantages to looking like you’re switched off. I think it would be advantageous for people to underestimate me.”

But if he is a Traitor, Kasim said he’d be “so hyped”.

Kasim said that if he were to win the prize money, he would spend more time with his daughter.

He added: “And I’d try to think logically about long-term security more than anything else. Obviously, the cost-of-living crisis has hit everyone bad.

“I tend to do an extra shift every other week to balance our books, but it means that I’m missing time at the weekend, and therefore I miss a lot of family time. It would be nice to have some financial security.

“I think my wife, Zara’s probably got plans for what she could do with the money! There are certain things we do need to get like a family car, because my car’s falling apart. But I want to be strategic with it.”

It will be up to the contestants to figure out who are the traitors as they spend time with each other at a castle in the Scottish Highlands.

Hosted by Claudia Winkleman, the show has had Brits hooked.

DESIblitz wishes Fozia and Kasim the best of luck.

The Traitors airs on BBC One and is available on BBC iPlayer.