Meet The Caseworkers: Episode 7, Avdhesh Gupta

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 Avdhesh Gupta from Banda, Uttar Pradesh. Avdesh has been working with Vanangana NGO as a caseworker since 1995 on gender based violence cases. She says, “When I joined the organisation and started working, I gained strength within me. We are reminded of our own experiences and I try that what I have been through, no other woman has to go through that. All the strength I can muster, I put all of it into working on her case and helping her.”

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.

Read in Hindi.