Some time back in the 1980s, an Indian woman named Sampat Devi Pal was living next door to an abusive man who regularly beat his wife. One day, Devi simply couldn’t take it any longer. She grabbed a hefty stick, marched over to her neighbor’s house, and gave the man a serious beating.

Not only did her bold and extremely brave act force the man to change his abusive ways, but it sparked an idea in Devi, who had become frustrated with the high levels of rape and violence against women in India, and also with the authorities’ failure to prevent or punish these crimes.

Devi decided the only way to empower women in her home province of Uttar Pradesh (India’s largest province) was to arm them as she had armed herself. Today, the group she started back then, known as the Gulabi (Pink) Gang, boasts over 400,000 members in 11 districts of Uttar Pradesh.

“Yes, we fight rapists with lathis [sticks]. If we find the culprit, we thrash him black and blue so he dare not attempt to do wrong to any girl or a woman again,”

she told Al-Jazeera in a recent interview.

While preventing and punishing violence against women is their primary goal, the Gulabi Gang see it as their job to, ‘protect the powerless from abuse and fight corruption’. On top of protecting women from rape and abuse, the group also helps prevent forced child marriages and makes sure the basic rights of the poor are protected.

India is not a great place to be a woman right now. Uttar Pradesh in particular is among India’s worst provinces in terms of women’s rights, with a literacy rate of only 47% for women and very high levels of domestic and sexual violence. According to Al-Jazeera,

“Uttar Pradesh ranks as one of the most unsafe provinces for women in the country, with 1,963 cases of rape, 7,910 cases of kidnapping and 2,244 cases of dowry death reported last year alone.”

But the grave realities don’t seem to be discouraging Devi. If anything, they are making her even more fiery and passionate about her cause:

“Men who commit these atrocities should be beaten by women. They should be caught and have a tattoo of ‘I am a rapist’ engraved on their forehead.”

The local authorities have been forced to take notice of the Gulabi Gang, and it seems that their work may inspire renewed efforts to protect and increase the rights of women in India. Here’s Arvind Sen, superintendent of police in one of the districts where the Gulabi Gang has gained notoriety:

“The Gulabi Gang has created such a force of women’s rights and awakening that it has brought a new desire to fight against women’s exploitation.”

Read more from Al-Jazeera here.