Amity University signed an MoU with Women and Child Safety Cell Gautam Buddh Nagar with the objective to establish Family Dispute Resolution Clinic at Women and Child Safety District Unit, Police Commissionerate, Sector-108, Gautam Buddh Nagar for the redressal of domestic and family disputes. The clinic will resolve such disputes through counselling and mediation assisted by the domain experts of Amity from Amity Law School, Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences and Amity Centre for Guidance and Counselling. The Counselling services provided by Amity University experts will be free of cost.
Inaugurating the Family Dispute Resolution Clinic at the Commissionerate, Ms. Lakshmi Singh, IPS Police Commissioner, Gautam Buddh Nagar, stated, “The Supreme Court has given the mandate for cases related to dowry harassment and domestic violence to go for mediation. If the mediation or counselling fails for three consecutive times, then the Police must go for coercive action. The need for Family Dispute Resolution Clinic arose because the Police deals with such cases very differently and just follows the process, since the police personnel do not get the opportunity to widen their horizon and unable to understand the psyche of the victims. Therefore, we need professional help to deal with such matters and also need victim-centric and trauma-centric policing. Crime against women have been widely accepted by the society and there is a need to engage the professionals between victims and perpetrators and therefore, experts are required to deal with these matters with a different perspective. At this centre, counselling will also be provided to the rape survivors because rape survivors go through a lot of trauma and their family and societal behaviour, unconsciously, changes towards them. Therefore, psychological sessions for rape survivors and their entire family are required so that these matters can be dealt with, in a more sensitive manner. Patience and capability to read the psychological mind are very crucial in such matters. At present, the centre will be for family counselling but in future, we aim to provide counselling to the rape survivors as well at this centre. We are really grateful to Amity since Amity has gone beyond its curriculum and the experts have dedicated their effort and quality man hours to help the Police. We hope that the Centre will be highly beneficial for the society and the country.”
Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Balvinder Shukla, Vice Chancellor, Amity University Uttar Pradesh averred, “Amity has introduced a course on Human Values and Community Outreach which is compulsory for all the students. As a result, we have tied up with a large number of NGOs and other organizations and this is another addition in Amity’s endeavours towards human values and community outreach programmes, especially for psychology and law students, to engage with the society, thereby working in real-life environment, getting hands-on experience, and giving back to the society, through Family Dispute Resolution Clinic, where faculty, PhD Scholars, M. Phil Scholars of Law dealing in family matters and psychologists will be providing counselling 5 days in a week.”
The MoU Signing Ceremony was attended by the Police personnel and Amity officials in large numbers.