Sneha Philip's family can finally breathe easy. On Friday, an appeals court in New York cleared the air on circumstances leading to the death of the 31-year-old physician, stating that she had been killed while trying to save people stranded in the World Trade Centre that was struck by terrorists on September 11, 2001.
The state appellate division, in a 4-1 ruling, rejected investigators' theory that Sneha may have been murdered by someone she had picked up in a bar the night before the terror attacks.
The speculation over the physician's death had taken a twist when a surrogate court declared the date of Philip's death to be September 10, 2004. Following this the Medical Examiner's Office took her name off the official list of WTC victims.
However, the appeals court over-ruled the surrogate court's ruling after taking into consideration Sneha's 'outgoing nature', and stated that it was possible that the doctor may have volunteered to help the victims.
'While it is logically possible that Sneha died by some other means on that date, either by random violence or at the hands of someone she met the night before, there is no factual basis in the evidence for that conclusion,' Justice David Saxe said, pronouncing the verdict.
'Even without direct proof irrefutably establishing that her route that morning took her past the World Trade Center at the time of the attack, the evidence shows it to be highly probable that she died that morning, and at that site, whereas only the rankest speculation leads to any other conclusion,' he added.
A statement by Ellen Winner (who had been appointed Sneha's legal guardian in a Manhattan Surrogate's case involving the doctor's estate) that the physician had been recklessly engaged in extramarital sexual relations with dangerous strangers she met in bars, formed the premise of investigators' suspicion.
The judge, however, dismissed it as hearsay and termed it as 'not a conclusion permitted by the evidence'.
The court ruling has come as a shot in the arm for Sneha's husband Ron Lieberman and her parents.
Marc Bogatin, Lieberman's lawyer, was quoted by The New York Post as saying that the ruling 'will give closure' to her family.
'There is now no question her name will be restored to the official list and that her name will be added to the list of those who died at the memorial, and that is a source of comfort to the family to know that,' he said.
