The name of an India-born doctor, who went missing without a trace from the World Trade Centre in New York after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks has been put back on the list of the victims after a four-year legal battle by her family.
Sneha Anne Philip, 31, was removed in 2004 from the victims' list by city officials who said they could not definitely link her presence in the World Trade Centre at the time of the attack as she did not work there and had left her home a day earlier.
However, Philip's family moved the State Supreme Court, which decided in its favour on Jan 31, overturning a 2006 decision by a lower court.
"It's a relief. Losing our daughter is bad enough, but having to go through this whole process was terrible," Ansu Philip, her mother, was quoted as saying by Newsday.
Chief Medical Examiner Charles S Hirsh said a death certificate had been issued for Philip, whose body was never found, listing her as the victim of the World Trade Tower attacks.
He said the death toll in the tragedy has now risen to 2,751, the second time it has been updated since the New York City set the exact death toll four and a half years ago.
The court took into consideration the fact that Philip was last seen in a video tape buying shoes at a store opposite the centre a day earlier and her family believes she attended a party in a hotel in the area and died while helping the wounded as the towers collapsed.
Her family plans to attend this year's ceremony on September 11 where names of those who died are read out.
They had attended the ceremony for two years before her name was scratched. Philip's husband Ronald Lieberman, also a doctor, had moved a Manhattan court to get his wife recognised as a victim of the attacks.
