Yahoo Lifestyle Indian Women Design Anti-Rape Jeans
In response to India's growing sexual violence epidemic, two women have designed a pair of anti-rape jeans that enable the wearer to send a distress signal to local police.
Featuring a specially installed tracker that activates when pressed, the jeans cost under a dollar, and can be worn for up to three months before the batteries run out.
The jean's creators, Diksha Pathak, 21, and Anjali Srivastava, 23, from India's northern Varanasi city, told press they had been thinking about the design for some time.
"My father is often making himself ill with worry each time I am coming home late," explained Pathak, a science student. "These terrible gang rapes of women that we have heard so much about recently shocked me and my colleague to the very core. Hopefully no other women will have to suffer if they are wearing our clothing."
200 police stations in the area have reportedly already been equipped with the technology to track the devices if they're activated.
Pathak hopes the system will be carried out nationwide if testing next month proves to be successful.
Diksha Pathak and Anjali Srivastava hope their jeans will save many women from sexual violence.
According to government figures, a rape occurs every 21 minutes in India, though many more go unreported. The country's government has come under fire recently for turning a blind eye to the sexual violence that is now rife across the country.
Following the brutal murder of two 15-year girls in the country's north earlier this month, an Indian minister caused outrage after saying he thought rape was "sometimes right".
"There should be justice for the families of the two teenage girls and for all the women and girls from lower-caste communities who are targeted and raped in rural India," said Lise Grande, the UN's resident coordinator for India.
"Violence against women is not a women's issue, it's a human rights issue."
India introduced tougher rape laws last year after the gang-rape and murder of a student on a bus in New Delhi, but it's done little to appease the situation.
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