Family of missing student falsely named as Boston terror suspect bombarded with hate messages
The father of a missing university student who was wrongly identified as a suspect in the Boston marathon terror attack said he and his family had been flooded with abusive messages as they searched for their son.
The "Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi" Facebook page, which the family were forced to take down after the missing man was falsely named as one of the Boston bombing suspects. Photo: FACEBOOK
By Dean Nelson, New Delhi
10:55AM BST 21 Apr 2013
Sunil Tripathi, a 22 year old philosophy student at Brown University was falsely identified as one of the suspects on Twitter after photographs of the two wanted men were released by the police.
His name was circulated around millions of people on social networking sites amid false rumours that his name had been overheard on police radio scanners. The fact that he had been missing for more than a month was cited as corroboration.
His father, Akhil Tripathi, a mechanical engineer and businessman, said Sunil had been missing since March 16th and that he and his family were co-ordinating their search for him from Provident, Rhode Island, when they were suddenly targeted as the parents of a "terrorist."
They were forced to suspend their Facebook page 'Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi' as it was targeted with abusive messages denouncing him and his wife as the parents of a "terrorist," Mr Tripathi told the Telegraph. "We had a team of people deleting messages, not even reading them. How could you raise a terrorist? that kind of stuff. Nasty messages. We just tried to get them out fast," he said in a telephone interview.
"It was absolutely horrible. The FBI released pictures of the suspects and somehow somebody thought it was Sunil. We couldn't understand it, they looked nothing like Sunil. And then the social media went crazy. There was no corroboration from the authorities. It was a terrible experience. We didn't eat or sleep and we had to take down our Facebook page. It was a horrific ordeal. They posted outrageous, illogical and nasty messages on it. There were a lot of media trucks at our home 30 miles from Philadelphia.
"All the authorities knew he was not a suspect. It was just people on Twitter and it went wild. It was the most horrific experience and I wouldnﾒt wish it on anybody. These kind of rumours must be corroborated with the authorities, but it was just individuals speculating and radio talk shows. It was the most harmful experience for 18 hours," he added.
Officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation visited them to offer support, he said, and were forced to name the real suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhokhar, earlier than they had planned.
But while Boston police and residents celebrated the capture of the Chechen brothers, the Tripathi family revived their campaign to find Sunil who has now been missing for 35 days. Their Facebook page was relaunched and received "tens" of apologies, Mr Tripathi said.
While he, his wife Judy, son Ravi and daughter Sangeeta remain deeply worried, he said the publicity given to the fact that Sunil is missing was a "silver lining" which they hope will help them find him.
No-one knows why he went missing last month, he said, because he had no obvious problems. He was an A student at Brown, he said, and he had spent the evening before he disappeared chatting to his girlfriend. "It's an awful feeling but we are relentless, we will not stop, we'll keep looking," he said.
"We have no clue where he is, but our optimism is higher now. After 35 days if he was not alive someone would have found him. We believe he is alive and it is a question of whether he is in a homeless shelter in some city. We'll keep looking We ae more optimistic in the light of this event and we hope to find him soon because there is more awareness now," he added.
