Sapkal was born on 14 November 1948,[1] in Pimpri Meghe in Wardha district in the then Central Provinces and Berar of Dominion of India to Abhimanyu Sathe, a cowherder.

Abject poverty, family responsibilities and childhood marriage to an older man forced her to quit formal education after she successfully passed the fourth standard.

She later gave away her own daughter to the Shrimant Dagdu Sheth Halwai trust of Pune, to eliminate the feeling of partiality between her own child and the adopted children.

[7][8] Details of Sapkal's struggle were provided in the weekly Optimist Citizen on 18 May 2016: In this constant tussle to survive, she found herself in Chikaldara, situated in the Amravati district of Maharashtra.

When Prime Minister Indira Gandhi arrived to inaugurate the tiger project, Sapkal showed her photographs of an Adivasi who had lost his eyes to a wild bear.

[10] She is quoted as saying, "I told her that the forest department paid compensation if a cow or a hen was killed by a wild animal, so why not a human being?