Questions have been raised whether Senura, the 'miracle boy of Naiwala', is the reincanation of Kalpana Chawla, an American astronaut, engineer, and the first woman of Indian origin to go to space, who died over 17 years ago.

Senura drew the attention of the media as he fluently speaks English and Hindi, and posseses an excellent IQ and general knowledge. His parents and family members say Senura, who has just begun his primary education, has never been exposed to English or any other foreign language at home. Senura hails from a low-income family in the Gampaha parents and his parents find it difficult to finance his primary education due to economic hardships.

His narrative of his past life, however, includes astonishing details about space travel and space craft.

Many social media users have observed similarities between Senura's account of his past life and the story of the Indian-American astraunaut who died under tragic circumstances in 2003.

Thedanath Perera, a former banker, who commended on the child's Youtube video said, "This child is incredible. His narrative is astonishingly close to reality though it may sound like fiction . He mentions Space travel and Space craft and recounts going over the Sun. He also describes a crash and falling on to desert, saying he experienced a burning . He can speak Hindi too. I cannot help but relate his story to the Astronauts who perished in the disintegration and crash of Space Shuttle, Columbia on 1st February 2003. The debris fell on a wide desolate area in Texas ( like he describes ).The only lady Astronaut was Kalpana Chawla, from Haryana, India who was an Engineer. According to what the little boy describes, he could be the reincarnation of the Indian Lady Astronaut, though it is a wild guess and probability of one in a million . May I suggest to Harendra to contact Prof. Chandana Jayaratne, Professor in Physics, University of Colombo for an initial examination and thereafter, NASA. This may need to be done early since some memories like in many instances may fade away."

Chawla was one of the seven crew members who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster when the spacecraft disintegrated during its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere