Anita Awachat

Founder

Anita Awachat is the founder of Muktangan Mitra (1986)[1], an Indian non-profit working on de-addiction, healthcare and mental health from Pune.

Anita Awachat (died 1997), known to her family as Sunanda, was an Indian physician and social worker. With her husband, the writer Anil Awachat, she founded Muktangan, a de-addiction and rehabilitation centre in Pune, in 1986. The centre is run by the trust Muktangan Mitra.

Early life and education

She was born into the Sohoni family of Thane in Maharashtra and was raised in a household influenced by Gandhian ideas. She qualified as a doctor.

Career

Awachat joined the Mental Hospital at Yerawada in Pune, where she set up a ward for infants and worked with women, children and other vulnerable patients. According to Muktangan's own account, her decision to make addiction treatment her main work followed the heroin addiction of a friend's adolescent child.

In 1986 she and her husband founded the Muktangan de-addiction centre in Pune. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1989 but continued to work at the centre. She died in 1997, after which her husband and their daughter Mukta Puntambekar took charge of Muktangan and its branches.[2][3][4]

Muktangan Mitra

Founded by Dr Anil and Dr Anita Awachat, Muktangan is one of India's most respected de-addiction and rehabilitation centres, treating alcohol and drug dependence with a humane therapeutic-community model and training counsellors nationwide.

Muktangan Mitra reports the following, on its own site: