PATHANAMTHITTA: On the morning of September 11, 2001, the sky over New York was cloudless, a postcard-perfect day.
For Sujo John, who had arrived in the United States barely seven months prior with dreams of making it big, it was like any other workday. The young accountant executive, with roots in Tiruvalla, was seated on the 81st floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Looking at the Statue of Liberty from his office room, Sujo’s thoughts immersed in the new life in the US.
Just a few blocks away, his wife Mini — four months pregnant — was on her way to her office on the 71st floor of the South Tower.
At 8.46am, American Airlines Flight 11 tore into the tower above Sujo’s office. The explosion ripped through steel and glass. “The walls were caving in. A portion of the plane’s wing cut into our floor. Fire was breaking out,” he recalls.
Amid the chaos, Sujo and dozens of colleagues crawled through the blaze, reached a stairwell, and began a long, terrifying descent. There were hundreds around them, the fear of death etched on every face.
The phones were not working. Firemen rushed up, never to return. It took Sijo more than an hour to get to the plaza level — only to witness bodies strewn across open space, the remnants of the plane burning.
Halfway down, he heard the second explosion — United Airlines Flight 175 crashing into the tower where Mini’s office was located.
He decided to make an attempt for the South Tower. Desperate to contact Mini, Sujo briefly re-entered the building on the 53rd floor to use a landline. Suddenly, the ground shook violently. “I thought it was an earthquake. Glass shattered, people screamed. That’s when I knew that I was going to die,” the 50-year-old says.
Buried under debris and choking on ash, he prepared for the worst. But in a miraculous twist, he was pulled out by a stranger: An FBI agent. The two, barely able to breathe, crawled toward the flashing light of a crushed ambulance that led them to the street.
Both towers collapsed soon after. Covered in soot and glass, Sujo believed his wife had perished. But late that evening, his phone rang. On the line was Mini. She had been delayed that morning by two minutes — and had never entered her building.
The couple reunited that night, shaken but alive. The very next day, Sujo wrote an email to a handful of friends describing his miraculous ordeal. That email went viral — long before social media made virality commonplace — reaching millions across the world. Newspapers carried it, radio and television picked it up. Invitations poured in, asking him to share his story.
Sujo realised his survival carried a purpose. “A building collapsed around me. But don’t we all have things collapsing in our lives — dreams, relationships, health? The real story is how we rise again, how we become resilient,” he says.
But Sujo’s journey didn’t stop at storytelling. His work brought him back to India, where he witnessed the brutal realities of human trafficking. In response, he founded YouCanFreeUs, a global organisation working to rescue and rehabilitate victims of modern slavery.
“Just as I was pulled out of the rubble that day, we are now pulling victims out of slavery, giving them dignity and hope,” he says.