Damodar Ganesh Bapat (b 1936/37 - d 17 August 2019)^[1] was an Indian social worker, notable for treatment and service of leprosy patients at Bhartiya Kushta Nivarak Sangh (BKNS) in Janjgir–Champa district, Chhattisgarh, India. He was born in Maharashtra in 1936/37. He moved to Jashpur, in Chhattisgarh, in 1970. There, he started volunteering with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh- affiliated Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram. Soon he came in contact with Sadashiv Katre who had founded a community, named Bharatiya Kushtha Nivarak Sangh (BKNS) in Champa, to care for leprosy patients. From 1972 until his death in 2019, during the last four-and-a half decades of his life he served the leprosy patients.^[2][3][4]

He died in the night of 16 August 2019, at a hospital in Chhattisgarh. He was 84 years old.^[1] Bapat had donated his dead body to Chhattisgarh Institute of Medical Sciences, Bilaspur for research purposes.^[5]

In 2018, the Government of India awarded him the Padma Shri in recognition of his social work.^[6]