She has a grand family of 382 sons-in-law, 49 daughters-in-law, and over a thousand grandchildren. Many of them are well-educated lawyers and doctors. Some of her children / grand children including her biological daughter - are running their own independent orphanages.
One of her children is doing a PhD on her life. She has been honored with more than 1000 National and International awards for her dedication and work. She used award money to buy land to make a home for orphaned children. Popularly referred to as “Mai”, Sapkal runs an orphanage – ‘Sanmati Bal Niketan Sanstha’ – in Hadapsar, Pune. She has adopted more than 1,500 orphan children. For her unmatched social service, she was was conferred the Padma Shri in 2021.
Sindhutai Sapkal, has been raising orphan kids for decades in Maharashtra. So far Mai (fondly called Mai – Mother), has raised over 1500+ orphans. Sapkal was born on November 14, 1948 in a cattle grazing family in Wardha district in Maharashtra. Being an unwanted child, she was referred to as Chindhi (Marathi for ‘torn piece of cloth’). Abject poverty, family responsibilities and an early marriage forced her to quit formal education. By that time she successfully passed the 4th standard.
At the age of 10, Sapkal was married to a 30 years old man. She bore three sons by the time she turned twenty. At the young age of 20, when nine-months pregnant, Sapkal was beaten and left to die by her husband. She gave birth to a baby girl in a semi-conscious state in a cow shelter outside their house on the night of October 14, 1973. Sapkal took to begging on the streets and railway platforms to survive. As she feared being picked up by men at night, she often spent the night at cemeteries. People called her a ghost since she was seen at night in the cemeteries.
Sapkal later found herself in Chikhaldara, where she started begging on railway platforms for food. In the process, she realized that there were many children abandoned by their parents and she adopted them as her own. She then begged more vigorously to feed them. She decided to become a mother to everyone who came across to her as an orphan.
She later donated her biological child to the trust Shrimant Dagdu Sheth Halwai, Pune, to eliminate the feeling of partiality between her biological child and the adopted children.
Sapkal fought for the rehabilitation of 84 villages. In the course of her agitation, she met Chhedilal Gupta, Minister of Forests of that time. He agreed that the villagers should not be displaced before the government had made appropriate arrangements at alternative sites. Sapkal also took care of these displaced and abandoned children in return for meager amounts of food.
Thereafter, it becomes the mission of her life. "Long Live Mai"
