A man was walking home with his dinner in Queens in March 2023 when he was whisked into a car. The occupants were set on revenge.
The man, who belonged to the same Bangladeshi American community in Queens as the occupants of the car, had been posting videos on TikTok in which he challenged a supermarket owner named Abu Chowdhury to a fight.
Mr. Chowdhury, the self-proclaimed “king of New York,” was in the car. He wanted to exact his version of justice.
For the next 13 hours, the man, Mubarak Dewan, was beaten savagely, drugged and stripped naked by Mr. Chowdhury and his entourage, according to federal prosecutors. Weeks later, they beat a second victim who had insulted Mr. Chowdhury’s girlfriend at the time. Hours later, they beat, drugged and humiliated a third man.
On Thursday, Mr. Chowdhury, 36, was convicted of three counts of kidnapping and three counts of kidnapping conspiracy in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. He faces decades in prison at sentencing.
Joseph Nocella, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said the kidnappings were “brutal, senseless and cannot be tolerated in a civilized society.”
During the two-week trial, Mr. Chowdhury’s victims testified in harrowing detail about the abductions, which came in response to perceived slights against his and his wife’s honor. The second victim was seen as describing Mr. Chowdhury’s wife as promiscuous; Mr. Chowdhury thought the third was flirting with her.
Mr. Chowdhury was indicted in January 2024 on six counts of kidnapping; eventually, seven more members of the crew, including his wife, Iffat Lubna, 27, would be indicted. All have been convicted at trial or pleaded guilty to federal charges.
Jurors were shown videos of the abductions and violent assaults. Two men were drugged and taken to a hotel in Queens; one of them was left tied up in an abandoned home. Joshua D. Tannen, a federal prosecutor, said Mr. Chowdhury had wanted to “show his dominance in the community” with the kidnappings and beatings.
During closing statements, Anthony Cecutti, a lawyer for Mr. Chowdhury, did not dispute that his client had “brutally assaulted” the three men. But Mr. Chowdhury had stopped short of kidnapping them, Mr. Cecutti argued, and said that the victims testifying were not credible.
Mr. Chowdhury owned a successful Bangladeshi supermarket in the Hollis neighborhood but was known for having a short temper, according to Anzu Khan, a member of the kidnapping crew who was Mr. Chowdhury’s business partner. Mr. Chowdhury kidnapped Mr. Dewan because his TikTok videos were both personally insulting and harming the supermarket, Mr. Khan said.
“Because of the video, our business was collapsing,” Mr. Khan, who had previously pleaded guilty, testified in court.
Weeks after the kidnapping of Mr. Dewan, Mr. Chowdhury turned his attention to Sheikh Mahode Hasan Preo, a young man who knew Ms. Lubna from college in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Mr. Preo, who was 21 at the time, had immigrated from Bangladesh just a month before and was staying with Ms. Lubna in Queens, prosecutors said. One night, Mr. Chowdhury summoned Mr. Preo for a conversation. Mr. Preo wound up describing Ms. Lubna’s previous romantic partners and past drug use.
The next day, on May 10, 2023, Mr. Preo was awakened by Ms. Lubna and lured into Mr. Chowdhury’s car, where they beat and tortured him with a knife and rod.
“If I can do this in America, then I could do a murder in Bangladesh,” Mr. Chowdhury told Mr. Preo, according to a recording of the assault played in court.
When Mr. Preo woke up, he was in an unfamiliar hotel room and wearing new clothes.
The third victim, Mazharul Islam, came to know Ms. Lubna through online English-language classes, he testified. Chatting over Microsoft Teams, they struck up what he thought was a connection, and, thinking she was single, Mr. Islam asked her on a date.
On May 11, Mr. Islam arrived outside Dera, a restaurant in Jackson Heights, Queens, for what he believed was a meal with Ms. Lubna. Mr. Chowdhury emerged from a minivan, grabbed Mr. Islam by the collar and forced him into the vehicle, where Ms. Lubna was sitting.
Mr. Islam was beaten on his shoulder, head and back with a rod as he begged his captors to stop, he told jurors. They took his phone and wallet and called his father in Bangladesh, ordering him to pay them $20,000 if he wanted his son to live.
“I was trying to plead with him, ‘Brother, if there’s any problems, let’s discuss it, but please don’t do this to me,’” Mr. Islam said.
Mr. Islam was taken to the same hotel room as Mr. Preo, where the beatings continued for another day. The captors then shuttled Mr. Islam into a car and drove him to a run-down house in Queens, where they blindfolded him and left him tied up in the basement.
After his captors left, Mr. Islam chewed through his restraints, removed his blindfolds and escaped the home. He then called an ambulance.
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