The Crisis Intervention Centres (CICs) as a part of Centre for Social Research’s development agenda addresses issues like Gender Based Violence (GBV), particularly Domestic Violence and Intimate Partner Violence, in Delhi/NCR through the provision and strengthening of support services such as psycho-social counseling, paralegal and paramedical support. These CICs are set up in local communities that create a close referral circuit with community stakeholders such the Police, Health Care Practitioners, Lawyers, socio-political leaders and community women and men’s collectives in order to create an enabling environment for women to flourish in a violence free society.

Currently, we have two functioning CICs in Vasant Kunj and Uttam Nagar. The Vasant Kunj Centre has been running for over a decade under our senior counselor, Ms. Kamlesh Premi. So far in 2018, this centre has solved 34 cases under the category of gender based violence, and 60 under the bracket of domestic violence. Other cases such as those of rape and property disputes are also taken up by the centre. The primary means of resolving these cases is through psycho-social counseling, however, depending on the nature of the case, they are sometimes referred to local lawyers, police and health practitioners. Apart from that, Ms. Premi is a member at different Internal Complaints Committees (ICCs) in different organizations, on the basis of which she intervenes on cases of sexual harassment at workplace and cases related to Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, too.

The Uttam Nagar Centre has registered 28 cases including 7 telephonic. The outreach achieved as one-to-one contact basis is 1412 individuals and one to group through different programs and in different locations is 332. Our counselor Ms. Rakhi Sharma has also attended 6 PCPNDT Act meetings and works with a similar approach with the community. Both these centres have a wide reach and popularity in the community and therefore have been playing a pivotal role in mobilizing people to sign petitions for our campaign on Women’s Reservation Bill, as well as enrolling candidates for our skill development program on Women Security Guards.