He was killed by hate — but he spent his life working for peace and love.
Subway-push victim Sunando Sen — who was shoved to his death in front of a 7 train last week, allegedly by madwoman Erika Menendez — was remembered at a small memorial service yesterday as a gentle intellectual who fought for human rights in his native Bangladesh.
“He had a quiet strength,” said pal Lorcan Otway, noting that Sen years ago had escaped oppression in the South Asian country and had recently worked to help his fellow Hindus in New York.
“He was an Indian Gregory Peck,” Otway said, comparing Sen, 36, to the humanitarian Oscar winner. “He didn’t have a hateful bone in his body,”
His alleged killer, Menendez, 31, has told investigators she pushed Sen because she believed he was Muslim.
During the ceremony at Coppola-Migliore funeral home in Flushing, Sen’s body was wrapped in cloth and covered with flowers. It lay in a blue-gray casket as mourners recited traditional prayers and burned incense.
Sen had no relatives here, and his parents have died. But he fashioned a family with the friends he made in New York.
“I feel like I lost a family member. The neighborhood, the shop, was his family,” said Bidyt Sarker, Sen’s boss at the Manhattan print shop where he’d worked for 15 years.
“Customers are coming in and crying.”
Sen’s body was cremated at a cemetery after the ceremony.
Meanwhile, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said yesterday that the troubled Menendez’s family called police at least five times since 2005 for the mentally ill woman. In each incident, Kelly said, “It appeared she had not taken her medication.”
Additional reporting by Doug Auer