MADISON, Wis. — The Madison man arrested for allegedly firebombing an anti-abortion clinic appeared to be a bright academic with a promising future.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Madison announced that police arrested 29-year-old Hridindu Sankar Roychowdhury at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Tuesday. He was charged via the complaint with one count of attempting to cause damage by means of fire or an explosive.
Hridindu Roychowdhury was a biology lab research assistant at UW Madison where he received a first author placement in the prestigious journal 'Nature' in February of 2022.
A month later, his Linkedin shows the Ph.D. candidate defended his thesis and went to Promega, a biotech firm based in Fitchburg, where he worked as a research scientist.
Last May, Roychowdhury was accused of throwing two Molotov cocktails at the anti-abortion Wisconsin Family Action center and spray-painting cursive graffiti on the building.
Federal agents have been searching for almost a year for whoever tossed a pair of Molotov cocktails into the Wisconsin Family Action office in Madison on May 6. One of the firebombs failed to ignite; the other set a bookcase on fire. The message “If abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either” was spray-painted on the building’s exterior. No one was in the office at the time.
The attack came about a week after a draft opinion suggesting the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, the decision that legalized abortion, leaked. The release sparked abortion rights supporters to mount protests across the country.
State Rep. Barbara Dittrich, R-Oconomowoc, said when she heard of his arrest, she immediately had some "troubling" concerns, and she took to Twitter to address them.
"It appears that he was just finishing up at the UW when this incident occurred and has since moved on," Dittrich said. "The UW did contact my office because, frankly, they admitted they had never taken his staff page down. So, they apologized for that oversight on their part. And did let us know that we don't have to worry about you know, asking for him to be terminated," she added.
Meanwhile, Wisconsin Family Action’s president Julaine Appling said the organization was not doing any interviews and not commenting at this time.
Spectrum News also reached out to representatives with Promega on Roychowdhury’s employment, but the company said it will not provide information on current or past employees.