Missing India born student Sunil Tripathi may be dead body pulled from Providence River

The Rhode Island medical examiner’s office is trying to determine if a body pulled from a river is missing Brown University student Sunil Tripathi, who was erroneously linked on social media to the Boston bombings last week.

An autopsy is being conducted on the body, however it was unlikely a positive identification will be made today, according to Dara Chadwick, spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office.

Sunil Tripathi may have been found, dead in the Providence River

The body appeared to be a male in his twenties and had “been in the water for a while,” said Commander Thomas Oates of the Providence Police Department.

“It’s very, very possible” that the body could be that of Tripathi, age 22, has been missing since mid-March, Providence police Lieutenant Joseph Donnelly said to the Boston Globe.

Tripathi’s family has not been notified of the body’s recovery, Donnelly said

The body was found in the river behind the Wyndham Garden Providence Hotel at around 6pm, the police officer told Globe.

The coach of Brown’s rowing team, which practices in that area, saw the body floating in the water and called police, Donnelly said.

A resemblance between bombing suspect in a photo and Tripathi, sparking widespread speculation that the missing Ivy League student was the bomber.

The speculation became so rampant it propelled Tripathi’s name onto the Twitter top trends list.

Tripathi’s family wrote on Facebook the attention had been “painful” and they “have known unequivocally all along that neither individual suspected as responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings was Sunil.”

On Monday, Reddit general manager Erik Martin apologized for the “dangerous speculation” that “spiraled into very negative consequences for innocent parties.”

“The Reddit staff and the millions of people on Reddit around the world deeply regret that this happened,” Martin wrote in a blog post on Monday.