How a ‘murder’ in Boston that didn’t happen made national news in India

How a ‘murder’ in Boston that didn’t happen made national news in India

Our 2024 IWMF Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow Anjana Sankar is based at CIS this semester, taking classes at MIT while embedding with The Boston Globe. An excerpt from her first byline with the Globe is featured below.

March 26, 2024 | Boston Globe | Anjana Sankar
Abhijeet Purchuru
Anjana Sankar
March 26, 2024
Boston Globe

The death of a young Indian student in Massachusetts has fueled a storm of online outrage and misinformation in his native country, where lurid headlines have baselessly suggested he was murdered in Boston as part of a rising tide of anti-Indian violence in the United States.

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth student Abhijeeth Paruchuru, 20, was found dead in a car in Freetown on March 8. Massachusetts authorities believe he died by suicide. “We found significant evidence indicating that he took his own life,” Dave Procopio, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts State Police, said in an email.

“We’re investigating it as an apparent suicide and waiting to hear from the medical examiner,” Gregg Miliote, a spokesperson for the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office, told the Globe.

Read the rest of the article, originally published in the Boston Globe here.