Can being wrongly accused of Boston bombing help find Sunil Tripathi?

Sunil Tripathi, a 22-year-old student at Brown University, went missing in March. The last time his family saw him was when they viewed CCTV footage of him walking out of the university hostel wearing a ski jacket, his hands in his pockets. The family, who was aware he was suffering from depression, lost no time to dive headlong into efforts to bring him back. They alerted the police, set up a Facebook page, shot a video of his close friends and family urging him to come back and posted it on social media. Even the FBI joined the hunt for Sunil Tripathi. [caption id=“attachment_723935” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File photo of Sunil Tripathi with his mother.[/caption] However, as the US reeled after being hit by the first major terror attack post 9/11, Tripathi’s family was in for a shock. Self proclaimed ‘investigators’ on the internet declared Tripathi a terror suspect despite the police saying that the suspects looked nothing like the missing student. In an interview with  The Independent, Tripathi’s family recount those 24 hours where their faith was thoroughly shaken. Buncombe quotes Tripathi’s sister:

“The past 36 days had been so very difficult for us,” said Mr Tripathi’s sister. “And then the events of [those hours] were very trying.”

However, they say that have now left the unsavoury episode behind and started their hunt for Sunil with renewed vigour. Given that more people know Sunil now, thanks to the internet mess-up, the family is trying to reach out to as many people possible to send out a message to their missing student. Not only have they resurrected the Facebook page ‘Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi’, which they had to pull down when he was wrongly deemed a suspect in the Boston bombing, but are also urging people to post messages addressed to him asking him to return. Read the complete The Independent article here.