Meet The Caseworkers: Episode 4, Shabina Mumtaz

Who is a caseworker? What was that one case that stayed with them? How do they deal with violence, both as a survivor and as a caseworker? What pushes them to step out everyday and work on cases of violence? In this episode, meet Shabina Mumtaz from Banda, Uttar Pradesh. Shabina has been working with Vanangana NGO for 17 years on gender based violence cases. She says, “I do this work to process my own feelings and help others break free from instances of violence, focusing more on mental and sexual violence.”

In 2022, we started working with 12 caseworkers across Uttar Pradesh, locating them as creators of knowledge around violence. With them, we created a vocabulary around gender-based violence (GBV) emerging from the grassroots, which is now live as the Caseworker’s Dictionary of Violence. The lexicographers for this dictionary are from Lalitpur, Lucknow, and Banda, with days, nights and decades of working cases that may have disappeared from history, if it wasn’t for them.

The 12 caseworkers who have co-authored this Dictionary, intervene in situations of murder, rape, abduction, child sexual abuse, dowry deaths and domestic violence. The caseworkers have emerged from the communities they work with, and have experienced violence in their own lives. They have learnt to be caseworkers by showing up, by doing, and by the occasional legal training and input.

In our series, Meet the Caseworkers, we spoke individually to these 12 caseworkers. They trace back their lives and times, their epiphanies, their regrets. They also share tools and strategies for other grassroot workers working with violence.

The Third Eye is being written and developed by a team of educators, documentary filmmakers, storytellers; people with extensive experience of gathering narratives, oral histories and developing contextual pedagogies for the rural and the marginalised.