The unexplained disappearance of Dr Sneha Anne Philip, a 31-year-old physician last seen shopping in Lower Manhattan the evening before the 11 September 2001 attacks, remains one of America's most contested unsolved cases 25 years on. Investigators, her family and observers remain split between two narratives: that she died as a bystander caught up in the World Trade Center chaos while trying to help others, or that she used the disaster's confusion to disappear amid a personal, professional and legal crisis that predated the attacks. The case matters because of the enduring dispute over whether she should be classed as a 9/11 victim, and because her family's lawyer argues she was unfairly judged over her lifestyle rather than the facts of her death.

Philip, born in India and raised in upstate New York, trained as a doctor alongside her husband Ron Lieberman, whom she met at Chicago Medical School before both took up residencies in New York in 1999. Court records show she was struggling before her disappearance: Cabrini Medical Center declined to renew her residency, citing tardiness and alcohol-related issues, a decision her family says was retaliation for whistleblowing on discrimination. She was also caught up in a bar altercation with a colleague she accused of groping her, after which prosecutors dropped charges against him and instead charged her with filing a false complaint, deepening the picture of turmoil in her life shortly before she vanished.