In 1991, Maniben was brought to the Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation by an elderly gentleman. She’d been sitting on the road with two children, with the younger one having passed away in her arms. Her mental illness had numbed her senses to the point that she had neglected to fulfill the child’s feeding needs. The smell of the putrefying body of the child drew passersby, including the elderly gentleman, who brought her into the centre. This was the first case of fostering a mother and child that the foundation came across.
The foundation is run by Mumbai-based psychiatrist, Dr Bharat Vatwani (62) who has many such gut-wrenching stories to tell. It aims to rescue destitute, mentally ill patients off the road and reunite them with their families. Since Dr Vatwani and his wife, Dr Smitha, began their work in 1988, they have rescued a total of 7,367 mentally ill patients, and reunited around 7,058 with their families.