They put him in a remand home for standing up against the Emergency.

He was barely fifteen when it happened. It was 26 June 1976 — the first anniversary of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency — and Nitin Gangane had joined a meeting in Wardha organised by those who dared to speak against the regime. His elder brother Bipin was already part of the resistance. That day, the police raided. They arrested Nitin and his friend Ashish Wele. Since they were minors, they were sent to a remand home under the Juvenile Act.

For the next year and a half, he lived behind those gates. During the day, he attended college. At night, he returned to the locked doors of the juvenile facility. Even after the Emergency ended in March 1977 and the Janata Party came to power in May, he remained inside. He was released only in October 1977.

By then, something in him had changed. The system had tried to silence him. Instead, it made him bolder, braver, more resolute.

Born at Kasturba Hospital , Sevagram

He was born on 11 June 1961 at Kasturba Hospital in Sevagram — the very institution he would one day lead. His birth was attended by Manimala Choudhary, who would later serve as Secretary of the Kasturba Health Society. His roots ran deep in this soil before he had taken a single step on it.

His father, Mrigrajendra Gangane, came from Gulbarga. A freedom fighter in the Hyderabad Liberation Movement, he had gone underground at sixteen to escape the Nizam’s rule, working closely with Vinoba Bhave, Baba Amte, and Annasaheb Sahastrabuddhe. In 1960, he moved to Sevagram and began work with the workers’ cooperative society, later overseeing construction of MLK Colony. He was not a man who separated his convictions from his daily life.

His mother, Prabha, came from Konkan. Orphaned young, raised by her aunt in Mumbai, she had joined the Medical Records Section at Kasturba Hospital and worked there until retirement. She held the household with a quiet steadiness that matched her husband’s extroversion.

Nitin studied in Marathi-medium schools: the government school in Sevagram until fourth standard, Yeshwant High School until seventh, Swavalambi Vidyalaya in Wardha for matriculation. These schools, these village streets, built in him a grit that his father’s activism had begun. He had seen, at close range, what it meant to stand for something.

The Entrance and the Classroom

In 1978, the year after his release from the remand home, he appeared for the Sevagram Pre-Medical Test at the Nagpur centre. Essay-based — questions on biology, physics, chemistry, and Gandhian thought, no multiple-choice shortcuts. He cleared it. Roll No. 24.

“The system had tried to silence him. Instead, it made him bolder, braver, more resolute.”

Hostel living was mandatory, but his family’s modest means allowed one concession: he took his meals at home. In medical school, he found lasting friendships — with Deepak Telawane, Gautam Daftary, Pradeep Bezalwar, Rupak Datta, Sanjay Dachewar, Sanjay Marwah, Sanjay Potdar, Sharad Patil, Sunil Mapari, and Sushil Kumar Varma.

The campus was, in the most literal sense, his native ground. He had been born in its hospital. He had grown up in its lanes. He had watched its teachers come and go from childhood. Now he was one of their students.

Beyond the Wards

After MBBS, he pursued an MD in Pathology. Then — unusually for a doctor from Sevagram in that era — he earned a PhD in Sweden, a journey that took him into the precision disciplines of European laboratory medicine before bringing him back.

He returned to MGIMS. He joined the Department of Pathology. He rose to become its Head. Then Dean. Then Vice-Chancellor of a reputed university.

The arc is exact: born at Kasturba Hospital on the campus; imprisoned as a teenager for the principles his father had lived; returned as the man who led the institution. Sevagram completed its own circle through him. The small-town boy who stood his ground grew up to lead the very institution that made him.

None of the titles that followed — Head, Dean, Vice-Chancellor — define him as much as the trials that shaped him. He had stood for something at fifteen. The standing had cost him. The cost had not broken him.

Dr. Nitin Gangane completed his MBBS from MGIMS, Sevagram, with the class of 1978, followed by an MD in Pathology and a PhD in Sweden. He served as Head of Pathology, Dean, and later Vice-Chancellor. He was born at Kasturba Hospital, Sevagram — the same institution he would one day lead.