(NewsNation) — The family of Sonam Kshatriya, a New York City woman found hanging in her Manhattan apartment in 2019, rejects the medical examiner’s ruling of suicide and has hired the attorney who helped reopen the Ellen Greenberg case in Philadelphia.
Joseph Podraza says there are confounding similarities between the cases of Kshatriya and Greenberg, whose suspicious 2011 death is the subject of the Hulu docuseries “Death in Apartment 603: What Happened to Ellen Greenberg.”
Kshatriya supposedly hung herself from the overhead bar of a closet, but her body was so bruised that the mortician handling her remains reportedly sent the corpse back to pathologists to take another look. Podraza notes there was unexplained blood evidence, and after rigor mortis set in, the 27-year-old’s limbs were bent at angles — an odd arrangement for body that had been hanging vertically.
“When you have these problems, you can’t call this a suicide. What you need to do is more investigation to figure out what happened here,” Podraza told “Banfield” on Wednesday.
The attorney said the woman’s family is asking the highest court in New York state to order a new investigation. He used legal means to force movement on the Greenberg case in Philadelphia.
Authorities in Pennsylvania contended that Greenberg, a 27-year-old teacher, died by suicide, even though she had 20 stab wounds, including to the back of her head. Her live-in fiance reportedly discovered Greenberg’s body after returning from a workout and finding the door locked from the inside.
What happened to Sonam Kshatriya?
The person who found Kshatriya’s body was her ex-boyfriend, a competitive jiu-jitsu fighter with prior arrests. The couple had broken up months before her death, but two days before her purported suicide, he texted her to suggest they watch a UFC fight. This took place Sept. 14, 2019.
The ex-boyfriend claims he left the next morning, at 7 a.m. Sunday, and returned Monday to walk the dog the two apparently shared. He said that’s when he found her body hanging in the closet.
Kshatriya was seen on surveillance video Saturday, wearing the same clothes she was in when she was found dead.
“There is no doubt in my mind that Sonam was murdered,” said Podraza, a civil litigation attorney based in Philadelphia. “There was a physical altercation. She has several bruises on her body. She has four unexplained hemorrhages on the scalp, sufficient enough to render her unconscious.”
Asked why New York authorities have not shown interest in reopening the case, he speculated there could be egos involved, or “the office made a decision, and they’re going to stand by it and see it to the end.”
“We’ve seen this in Philadelphia, in the Greenberg case, where we’ve had to fight to the Nth degree, and we don’t quite understand why,” Podraza said. “Several judges have said the same thing: ‘We don’t understand why the city is fighting it so hard.’ We’re seeing the same thing in New York City.”
Did Sonam Kshatriya leave a farewell note?
Kshatriya’s personal journal was found at the front entrance of her apartment. One cryptic entry in her handwriting said, in part, “I cannot see the future if you’re not in it … I’m sorry for everything, but most for causing you grief, sadness, stress and pain. I love you, and I always will. I hope we meet again. Love, Sonam.”
Podraza said the woman was a prolific writer. He said the passage in question was torn from another book and “placed in the premises in a different book.”
“How it got there, is, to me, very suspicious,” he said.