While the government and judiciary in India continue to frustrate, anger and disappoint women when it comes to issues regarding their sexual security, this teenager teenager decided to go a step further. Deeply disturbed by the Delhi Nirbhaya Rape case of 2012, Telengana based Siddharth Mandala spent the next five years of his life striving to help women against sexual assault, pretty ambitious for someone so young, but today he has achieved this by inventing an electric shoe that can electrocute potential sexual assaulters.

17-year old Mandala’s soon-to-be patented device is called ElectroShoe and according to The Better India, on contact, it can electrocute the perpetrator instantly by inflicting 0.1 ampere of electricity, while sending an alert for assistance to cops and family members. It charges itself through a concept called the “piezoelectric effect”; the more the user walks, the more energy is generated and stored in a rechargeable battery.

This patent-pending device failed 17 times, but Mandala was resilient in his efforts and finally after two years (and being electrocuted twice!) his prototype for the Electroshoe worked.

Mandala told India Times,“After the patent is obtained, I plan to approach start-up incubators in the city to get a better understanding of how my product will fare in the real market and what changes I have to make to the prototype.”

According to Better India Mandola has other achievements in social work as well- He started the NGO Cognizance Welfare Initiative (CWI) that spreads awareness about rape; it has been covered by the BBC and he is the team leader of the Indian Youth Wing of USA-based organisation Empower & Excel, that does social work in Indian villages.

Feature Image Courtesy: The Better India