In the quiet hills of Jol Sappar, near Nadaun in Himachal’s Hamirpur district, an elderly man still opens his modest clinic each morning. At 77, Dr Rajendra Kanwar — known locally as the “Kangu Wale Doctor” — greets patients with the same gentle smile he has offered for nearly five decades. Many leave without paying a single rupee.

“Beta, your health is more important than my fees,” he often says to the poor and needy who still seek him out. “Come, sit. Tell me what hurts.”

Born on 15 October 1952 in the village of Dhaneta to Gulab Devi and a father who was himself a doctor, young Rajendra grew up watching medicine heal not just bodies, but lives. He joined the Health and Family Welfare Department on 3 January 1977 as a Medical Officer at the Community Hospital in Bhoranj. For 33 years he served across remote corners of Himachal, finally retiring in 2010 as Senior Medical Officer from the Primary Health Centre in Kangu.

By his side through much of that journey was Krishna Kanwar, a dedicated teacher who spent 32 years in the Education Department and retired as principal of the Government Senior Secondary School at Bada in 2011. The couple had no children. One quiet evening years ago, as they sat together in their two-storey house built on more than 2,000 square metres of land, Krishna looked at her husband and spoke the words that would shape their legacy.

“Rajendra,” she said softly, “what will we do with all this when we are gone? Let our life’s earnings ease someone else’s pain.”

He nodded. “We have each other. The rest belongs to those who need it more.”

Together they decided: every asset they had built — the house, five kanals and five marlas of land, jewellery worth crores, a car, furniture, bank deposits — would one day serve society. In 2021, after Krishna’s passing on 6 December 2020, Dr Kanwar kept their promise. He willed everything to the government. On 5 August 2026, he went a step further, executing a Gift Deed that transferred the entire property — now valued at over ₹80 crore (some estimates place it near ₹100 crore) — to Dr Radhakrishnan Government Medical College and Hospital, Hamirpur. The land mutation was registered in the college’s name the same day.

The house, barely 100 metres from the under-construction medical college, holds a special request from the doctor. “Turn it into an old-age home,” he has urged officials. “Call it the Krishna-Rajendra Old Age Home. Let senior citizens find comfort where we once lived.” He has also pledged his body and organs to the college’s anatomy department, already holding the formal consent card.

When Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu learned of the gesture, he called it “an exemplary model of sacrifice and public service.”

Dr Kanwar himself remains characteristically understated. Standing outside the home he has now given away, he simply says, “Life’s earnings are best spent when they alleviate the suffering of the needy and senior citizens. My wife and I always believed that. Now the work continues.”

And so, every morning in Jol Sappar, the doctor still practises. Patients arrive. He listens. He treats. Many walk away healed in body — and quietly inspired in spirit.