Dr Sankurathri lost his family in Kanishka bombing. An ‘India-Canada peace garden’ will be his legacy
New Delhi: Dr Sankurathri Chandrasekhar, 79, lost his wife and two children in the 1985 Kanishka bombing. Within three years of the tragedy, the Canada-based Padma Shri awardee returned to Andhra Pradesh and started a charitable organisation in his wife’s village, Kakinada. Through the Sankurathri Foundation, he dedicated his life to helping people and never looked back. As he sits in his living room for an interview with ThePrint via Zoom, Dr Sankurathri ensures that a photograph of his wife, Manjari, is visible. It is his life’s work as a social worker through which he honours her memory, and that of his six-year-old son Srikiran and three-year-old daughter Sarada.
“I never wanted anything in return for my work,” he says, “but when people visit our compound and bow down to the statue...