The night of December 17, 2012 wasn't an easy one for 20-year-old Manisha Mohan.
The previous day, a 23-year-old woman was brutally gangraped in a bus
in New Delhi. Mohan was spending winter vacations at her home in
Chhattisgarh. The student of automobile engineering at Chennai's SRM University was aggrieved.
Mohan, who belongs to a middle class family of scholars — her father is
a professor of geography in Punjab University, her mother is a
historian — went to a convent where, as she
put it, "they teach you to be loving towards others." "I felt pained,"
she recalls, "which transformed into anger and anguish." Mohan thought
for days. "I knew that women,
not only in India, but everywhere are not safe. I respect the law, but
what I wanted was something that gave out a message, 'you touch me and you see!'"
A fortnight later, she returned to college and discussed a plan with Rimpi Tripathi,
a second year student of instrumentation and control engineering. By
then, Mohan had worked out the device she wanted to make — a bra that
shocks the assailant. "The upper part of a woman's body is prone to
harassment," she explains. To create the circuit, she needed the help of
someone with an electronics background. Tripathi introduced Niladhri Basu Pal,
a student and friend to Mohan. In a couple of months, the trio worked
on a circuit board that could be fitted on to a bra that would perform
two vital functions.
The device called Society Harnessing Equipment
(SHE) comprises pressure sensors, an electric circuit, and Global
Positioning System (GPS) and Global System for Mobile Communications
(GSM) modules. The circuit is placed on the bosom and when pressure is
applied the sensor-enabled device will trigger a 3,800 KV surge of
current that can incapacitate the assailant long enough for the woman to
escape. The innerwear would be bilayered; the layer touching the skin
made of a material that would insulate her from the shock. Sensors would
be placed between the two layers. The sensor is calibrated to
distinguish between a normal touch, like a hug, and a violent one, like a
squeeze, grab and pinch. The GPS and GSM work in tandem to send location details of the woman.
In case of multiple attacks, SHE can send up to 82 electrical currents.
"The device can be recharged like we recharge our cellphones," Pal
says.
As of now the size of the device is a hassle. "We're
still in the R&D stage, and looking for funders," adds Mohan. "We're
also looking at the washability of the fabric."
