AIL Mohali first year students organised a fundraiser under the banner “stop the shame”, in collaboration with the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC) , in Chandigarh on 25 December.

Kudrat Dutta Chaudhary, Madhvi Sandhu, Nimisha Menon, Arundhati Mishra and Manik Gupta organised a two part fundraiser – a street play, and a corporate drive – aiming to distribute 1000 free-of-cost pepper sprays among the underprivileged working women in Chandigarh, also teaching them the proper use of the spray for self-defense.

Around 30 students participated in the drive on 25 December when the street play was staged thrice. The play also included self-defense techniques demonstrated by a professional boxer amongst the participating students.

The organisers will now initiate the corporate fundraising drive, to meet the gap after the donations from the play. Chaudhary told Legally India that the subsidised scheme under which they will be purchasing the pepper sprays, each small-sized spray will cost them Rs 150, instead of the regular rate of Rs 200.

She said: “Since we’re living in Mohali, all of us [the organisers] have faced the situation of eve-teasing some time or the other. Mohali is a very unsafe place. It so happened that we learnt the correct use of pepper sprays by spraying ourselves.” [Facebook page for the drive]