Bengaluru-based activist Subhashini Vasanth on 13 January 2016 was honoured with Neerja Bhanot Award.
Bengaluru-based activist Subhashini Vasanth on 13 January 2016 was honoured with Neerja Bhanot Award.
Bollywood actor Sonam Kapoor presented the award to Vasanth at a ceremony held in Chandigarh. Sonam Kapoor is playing the lead role in the biopic Neerja.
Subhashini Vasanth is the Founder Trustee of Vasantharatna Foundation, started in the memory of her husband, Colonel Vasanth V, who was awarded the Ashok Chakra (Posthumous) in 2008 for his selfless, supreme sacrifice while fighting terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir.
Her own personal loss motivated her to start the Foundation to create a support system for the well-being of families of Jawan’s martyred in the service of the nation, she said.
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The Awardee is selected by a specially constituted Jury on the basis of a 3 point criteria – an Indian woman subjected to social justice, on counts such as dowry, desertion, faces the situation with guts and grit and then makes a success of life by assisting other woman in similar social distress, the Trust said.
“The vision of the Foundation is to be able to touch the lives of all martyr families across the nation,” she said. The objectives being to empower the women and educate them and their children, besides providing emotional, legal, and financial counselling and to be a bridge between the larger society, Government agencies and the families of martyrs.
Subhashini is an eminent Bharatnatyam exponent known for her intense abhinaya and immaculate footwork. She is recognized as a National level artiste by the Indian Council of Cultural Relations, Doordarshan and India International Rural Cultural Centre.
Neerja Bhanot was a flight attendant for Pan Am, who was killed while saving passengers from terrorists on board the hijacked Pan Am Flight 73 on September 5, 1986.
Bhanot was awarded India’s highest peacetime military award for bravery, the Ashok Chakra.
(With agency input)