Soumitra is a consultant psychiatrist, and the Director of the Centre. In the past, he has provided technical assistance to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India in drafting India’s new Mental Health Care Act 2017, which takes a rights-based approach to mental healthcare.

He was also a member of the Mental Health Policy Group appointed by Government of India to draft India’s first National Mental Health Policy released in October 2014. He has served as a WHO consultant in many low and middle-income countries (Botswana, Seychelles, Lesotho, Samoa, Vanuatu, Eritrea) assisting them in drafting and implementing mental health legislation and national mental health policy.

Soumitra is also the Co-director of SPIRIT (an implementation research project on suicide prevention, funded by NIMH) and a co-lead on Outlive (a youth suicide prevention project funded by Comic Relief, UK).