Landlord ‘set fire to apartment with six kids inside over unpaid rent’

Rafiqul Islam (left) was charged more than a month after allegedly setting an apartment building on fire because his tenants wouldn’t pay rent (Pictures: New York City Fire Department/CBS)

A landlord allegedly set an apartment ablaze because the tenants stopped paying rent, causing the parents to toss four of their children to neighbors to save their lives.

Rafiqul Islam, 66, was enraged that his tenants would not pay rent and refused to move out of the apartment in Brooklyn, officials said. He is accused of igniting the staircase while the parents and six kids were still on the second-floor unit.

Shatfiqul Islam, who lived on the first floor, said he and his roommates woke up around 5am to screams of ‘fire’ and ran out of the building.

‘We’re all outside, and then we see they’re on the roof. Like, six kids and a mother, they’re all on the roof, and father,’ Shatfiqul Islam, whose relationship to the suspect is unknown, told CBS New York at the time.

People living in the first floor of the two-story building were able to run out (Picture: Pix11)

Rafiqul Islam has been charged with eight counts of attempted murder, arson and assault (Picture: New York City Fire Department)

‘They’re trying to throw the kids, and tell us, “Take them, take them.”’

Shatfiqul said he and his roommates caught four of the children and that their parents then jumped. Firefighters entered the building and rescued the two remaining kids, he said.

‘They were screaming,’ a neighbor, Sahil Uddin, told the news outlet. ‘By the time really the kids got out, the whole house got smoked up right away.’

Seven people were hospitalized with minor injuries, CBS New York reported.

Witnesses said the parents threw their children from the burning home to good Samaritans below to save their lives (Picture: CBS)

Fire marshals spent about a month video canvassing the building at 212 Forbell St around the September 26 incident before finding an image of Rafiqul without his mask and hood.

Rafiqul was hit with eight counts of attempted murder, arson and assault on Friday, according to the New York City Fire Department. He remained in jail as of Monday, according to Law Crime.

The landlord had previously threatened to set the building on fire if the tenants did not pay, officials told WPIX. Rafiqul allegedly also warned he would stop electricity and gas into the unit.

Rafiqul was charged just weeks after a landlord was arrested for allegedly attacking his tenant and killing her six-year-old son in Plainfield Township, Illinois, over the Israel-Hamas war.

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