Biography
Sunil Tripathi was a 22-year-old Brown University undergraduate who went missing in March 2013 after taking leave from his studies. Following the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, users on the Reddit forum r/findbostonbombers attempted to crowdsource the identification of suspects, and a post wrongly named Tripathi as a possible match to released images, despite a subreddit rule against naming people without evidence. The false claim spread to other social media and was amplified by some commentators before the FBI identified the actual perpetrators; Tripathi had no connection whatsoever to the bombing. His body was recovered from the Seekonk River later that month, and authorities determined he had died before the bombing took place. The episode caused significant distress to his family and is widely cited as a cautionary case about online misidentification.