Sneha was a 31-year-old internal medicine physician and resident doctor living in New York City. She shared a Manhattan apartment with her husband, Dr. Ron Lieberman, less than half a mile from the World Trade Center.
Keep reading to learn more.
The day before the devastating attacks on September 11, 2001, Sneha had a day off work. By all accounts, everything appeared normal, but her husband raised the alarm the following morning after realizing she had not returned home the previous night.
Earlier that day, Sneha had spent time at the apartment repotting her orchids before chatting with her mother on instant messenger for several hours, The Independent reported. During their conversation, Sneha spoke about a night out she had enjoyed and discussed her plans for the week ahead.
Later that afternoon, she visited a nearby department store, where she bought lingerie, a dress, bed linen, and shoes. CCTV footage captured her inside the store.
According to official records, this was the last confirmed sighting of Sneha.
She was not at home when her husband, Ron, returned to their apartment after a shift at Jacobi Hospital that night. However, Sneha had previously stayed with relatives in the West Village without telling him, so he initially assumed that was where she had gone.
According to The Independent, Ron left the apartment again the following morning without seeing his wife. After hearing the horrifying news of the 9/11 attacks, he began calling friends and relatives to ask whether anyone had seen Sneha. Nobody had.
Sneha was eventually listed among the presumed victims of 9/11, but exactly what happened to her remains unclear 25 years later.
One theory held by her family is that Sneha died trying to help others. They believe she may have been near the World Trade Center when the planes struck the Twin Towers, prompting her to rush toward the scene to help those who were injured, according to New York Magazine.
City officials, however, considered a different possibility, that the 31-year-old had been living a double life. Reports have detailed the personal ‘struggles’ her loved ones acknowledged, which had reportedly cost Sneha her job and contributed to problems in her marriage to Ron. Officials also suggested she may have died the night before the attacks.
Her family has consistently disputed that theory and even hired a private investigator to examine Sneha’s disappearance.
The investigation found no evidence of an affair or a planned disappearance, WBTW reported. Sneha had also left behind her glasses, passport, identification and credit cards at the apartment.
With no definitive explanation for what happened to her, Sneha’s name has been added to and removed from the official list of 9/11 victims several times.
She was first removed from the list in 2004 by the medical examiner’s office after police could not establish that she was alive on the day of the attacks. A judge subsequently ruled that her date of death was September 10.
Her family appealed the decision, and four years later, the ruling was overturned. It was determined that the evidence made it more likely than not that Sneha had died in or around the World Trade Center.
Sneha’s name now appears on the 9/11 Memorial in New York City.
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