raksha women safety protocol field testing
a free application system that turns the people already nearby into first responders for women in danger.
in september 2026, a 17-year-old was assaulted in a park in kalkaji, roughly 200 metres from the lotus temple, one of the busiest places in delhi. help was a few hundred metres away the whole time. nobody nearby knew.
help is almost always close by. it just doesn't know it's needed.
why i'm building this
that story stayed with me. in a city this crowded, someone is almost always within shouting distance, so why does help arrive so late? before designing anything, i studied several real cases and read through about 76 court judgements on these crimes in delhi, to understand how these situations actually unfold: where they happen, when, and what could have changed the outcome.
and one thing was clear from day one: raksha has to be free. safety shouldn't depend on whether you can pay for it.
why it matters
~6
cases of sexual violence registered in delhi every day, about 2,100 a year
41%
of delhi women harassed or assaulted in public in a single year, mostly on streets and in transport
6–7min
average police response, by their own figures (and the clock only starts once someone calls 112)
those minutes are where things go wrong. but attackers count on being alone, and just one person showing up can stop an attack before it gets worse. research shows that when people nearby know something is happening, they almost always step in. people want to help. they just don't know they're needed.
where it is now
i designed raksha end to end, from research and user flows to the final ui, and i'm building it myself. the first version is in field testing on android, and the plan is to pilot it on one delhi university campus first: start small, make the network dense, measure real response times, and grow from there.
