A Queens woman embroiled in a nasty, years-long TikTok feud with a man in her Bangladeshi community took part in his brutal kidnapping and beating, a federal jury found.
Sultana Razia, 40, wasn’t the one who abducted victim Mubarak Dewan as he walked home after getting takeout in Jamaica on March 27, 2023. The actual abduction was committed, according to the feds, by supermarket owner Abu Chowdhury — who’s accused of heading a kidnapping ring that also snatched and tortured two men who crossed his vengeful wife, Iffat Lubna.
But Razia and co-defendant Syed Rubel Ahmed gleefully took part in the victim’s hours-long ordeal, meeting up with the kidnappers as they drove Dewan around Queens, beat him, drugged and stripped him, and forced him to stand naked on the street, the feds argued.
She punched Dewan, hit him with a coconut broom, and posted video on TikTok of him naked with the caption “Mental Health Awareness Month” and three emojis smiling with their tongues out.
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Syed Rubel, one of the defendants in a kidnapping conspiracy.
Razia’s trial ended June 26, with a jury needing about a day to find her and Ahmed guilty of kidnapping. The trial included testimony from a 100,000-follower TikTok influencer who watched the online feud unfold.
It’s the second of three Brooklyn Federal Court trials involving Chowdhury’s alleged vengeance-themed kidnapping operation. His wife, Lubna, was convicted by a jury in April. He’s scheduled to go to trial in September.
After the verdict, prosecutors asked Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Nina Morrison to lock up Razia and her co-defendant without bail. But the judge deferred that decision until a hearing July 23, letting them remain free on bond — $50,000 for Razia, $100,000 for Ahmed.
Razia and Dewan’s feud apparently started when Dewan accused the woman and her family of stealing more than $30,000 from him, with Razia calling Dewan a liar and a cheater, prosecutors said.
“What Razia and Dewan’s feud does tell you, is that Razia really, really doesn’t like Dewan,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Vagelatos said in his closing argument to the jury. He pointed out that Razia, in a phone call three days after the kidnapping, gloated, “We beat him up and we took our revenge.”
“It wasn’t enough to kidnap, strip and beat the victim,” Vagelatos said. “Sultana Razia had to make sure the world knew it.”
Dewan also ran afoul of Chowdhury — an imposing figure in the Queens Bangladeshi community, described by his wife’s lawyers in April as “the beast.”
Dewan posted TikTok videos about the supermarket owner, challenged him to a fight, and boasted that he had his own crew and that Chowdhury “didn’t own the streets,” according to prosecutors.
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Shahed Alom, one of the defendants in a kidnapping conspiracy.
Chowdhury turned to violence, prosecutors said, ambushing the victim at 181st St. and Hillside Ave. in Jamaica just after sundown. He forced him into a Honda SUV to take a rough, hours-long ride through Queens, according to the feds.
Chowdhury took several videos throughout the night chronicling how he and his accomplices tortured Dewan. At 9:12 p.m., after they dragged him onto a driveway in front of a garage, he made a video call to Razia, the prosecutor said.
“She grabbed her husband, her uncle and a broom,” Vagelatos said. “They were driving to a kidnapping. A half-naked man, cornered in the cold, in the dark, with someone punching him in the genitals.”
Razia’s lawyer, Sarah Sacks, countered that Dewan had been harassing Razia online for years, threatening to rape her, posting photos of her house, calling her a prostitute and lying about her stealing money from him.
A TikTok influencer who goes by the name “Baba King,” testified that the two cursed back and forth on their livestream videos. In one bizarre moment, he testified about how someone tagged him in a comment thread about putting a “hot egg in Sultana’s a–.”
“I don’t take none of the comments even serious,” the influencer explained. “People just talk whatever they feels like, but won’t do it. No one do it. It’s just talk.”
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Anzu Khan, one of the defendants in a kidnapping conspiracy.
Sacks said Chowdhury had acted without Razia’s knowledge when he grabbed Dewan, and that although posting video of him naked and afraid on the street wasn’t wise or kind, Razia thought he had just been beaten up, not kidnapped.
Razia showed up at the scene not to aid in a kidnapping, but to confront her online tormentor, Sacks maintained.
“If someone…repeatedly threatened to physically harm you, your husband, your children, and anyone connected to you over a bogus claim for money, might you be happy if you thought someone beat them, thinking they got their just
deserts?” Sacks asked. “And if you were given the opportunity to prove in front of your community that his claim, which caused you years of fear, embarrassment, and depression was phony, might you go to that meeting?”
Prosecutors countered that Razia knew Chowdhury was going to “catch him and beat (Dewan),” and that even if she hadn’t, it was crystal clear once she arrived that Dewan wasn’t free to leave, and that she helped surround him while beating him.
“How many of us haven’t driven at 9 or 10 at night to the side of a highway, protected by trees and bushes, to clear the air with a naked, beaten, kidnapped man?” Vagelatos asked jurors. “Do you believe that Razia traveled to clear the air — or that she grabbed her husband, another male friend and a broom to beat him and get ‘our revenge?’”
The jury answered that question with their verdict: guilty.
