On several occasions in the past five months since 25-year-old Ritesh Shetty went missing police and forest officers had conducted extensive searches for the Cornell University graduate student. They had also made announcements over local radio and television stations. But the searches yielded no result.

Shetty, who was taking treatment for depression, had left no note. His meagre bank account remained unused. His passport was still in his room. And Shetty, who used to walk a mile to his office, had left his car in the garage. Over a dozen of his friends, who had been mystified by his sudden disappearance, said as recently as last week they were still hopeful he would return.

On Monday morning authorities in Ithaca, the university town that had been Shetty's home for three years, had bad news. They confirmed the body discovered by a hiker last week in a gorge was that of Shetty.

They also confirmed that Shetty, who came to America to pursue a doctoral degree in chemical engineering ago after obtaining a degree from IIT-Bombay, had hanged himself from a tree. An autopsy was conducted over the weekend, Tompkins County officials told rediff.com

In an interview with rediff a few days after Shetty's disappearance Mark Dresser, an investigator at the sheriff's office, had said when a person disappeared officials weighed a number of possibilities. "We look at kidnapping, if the person decided to make himself anonymous, if there was an accident," he  had said. "Or, if he killed himself."

Some of Shetty's friends were worried that in post 9/11 America, if he had become a victim of racism.

But officials insisted they had no reason to suspect foul play. They also confirmed that Shetty was not working on any project related to national defense departments. 

Shetty, described by his friends as a reasonably gregarious person who often withdrew into his work, had a habit of keeping himself away from friends for several days from time to time. So it took them nearly four days to notice his absence.

Shetty's friends and family initially did not want to discuss his mental health in earlier interviews but when pressed, several of them reluctantly said they knew of the problems but did not consider it serious. His academic performance had never suffered, they said.

Reacting to his sudden disappearance, his brother-in-law told the campus publication in September he was bewildered.

'This is very unusual. This is not like him at all,' Mahesh Ariga, a consultant for General Electric who lives in Cleveland, said.

Ariga dismissed the possibility of Shetty disappearing on purpose. He would not believe he would ever kill himself .

'If I send him an e-mail, it's more likely than not that he's online at the same time, and responds to me in minutes,' Ariga had told reporters.

Shetty's friends were joined by his classmates and many other Indian students who sent out messages about him to their friends across New York and neighboring states, and put up posters over downtown Ithaca and the campus.

While several Indian students began to wonder if Shetty had fallen into depression, his close friends and roommate had rejected the idea. He was not a person who kept his feelings to himself, they had said.