Phoolan Devi

b. 1963 – d. 2001

Gangster / Political Figure / Modern India's "Bandit Queen"

She was born on August 10, 1963 in the lower mallah caste, in a family of Mallah (boatmen), in a small
village called Ghura Ka Purwa in Uttar Pradesh. As a child she searched for the face of God to ask Him why
her family had nothing, and others so much; why mallah children had to do chores for everyone in the
village, hoping for a piece food in return. Mallahs were allowed to be beaten by thakurs, a ruling caste.
Phoolan and her sisters were constantly beaten and insulted by her own uncle, Bihari. Her family was
poor, but they were not the poorest in the village. Her father owned an acre of land and a huge Neem tree
on it.

In 1973, when Phoolan was ten years old, her cousin, Mayadin, became the head of the family. In an effort
to rid himself of Phoolan, Mayadin arranged to have her married to a man named Putti Lal, who lived
several hundred miles away. Putti Lal was in his thirties when he married Phoolan, who was eleven years
old. He abandoned her a few years later after raping her, a number of times and sends her back to her
village, where she was considered deviant, impure, and shameful. She devised ways for the poor to make
sure that they would be paid for their work; she made many enemies and got a reputation for using bad
language, and being a troublemaker.

One thing led to another for standing up for herself, or for her family, Phoolan was always punished
tenfold by the thakurs and village elders. Eventually the son of the Sarpanch (head of the village
federation) came with a gang of men in the night to her house, and raped her in front of her parents.
Seeking revenge, Phoolan broke again the code of silence regarding rape, and went to a thakur, a village
chief from a neighbouring village who had a dispute with the Sarpanch. The chief and his men went to the
Sarpanch's house, but only the women were at home, so they drove them out, and beat them, and tore the
sari off the Sarpanch's wife.

The same evening, a council was held to decide what to do about Phoolan. The verdict was marriage to an
old man, a servant of the Sarpanch. She rejected, as she would all her life, the idea that anyone should
decide her fate like that: she ran away. In 1979, Mayadin accused Phoolan of stealing from his house. She
denied the accusation, but the police arrested her anyway, gang-raped. But as there was no evidence
against her, she was released.

Phoolan and her family had to barricade themselves in the house; every day was a new humiliation. Again
she was raped and beaten in front of her parents; when she complained to the police, they took no action,
and called her shameless for telling such things.

In the same year, real dacoits, a gang of both mallahs and thakurs, sent by the Sarpanch took her from the
village for good. She hid when she heard them coming; the bandits grabbed her little brother, and yelled
that they would take him instead if she didn't come out, so she did. They kidnapped her and took her deep
into the jungle, walking for days.

There were two factions in the gang of at least thirty men: the thakurs, led by Baboo Gujar Singh, and the
mallahs, led by a man named Vikram. Baboo kept trying to touch her; again and again, Vikram defended
her. Eventually, it did come down to this. Phoolan goes with them on raids through villages, Baboo forcing
her to watch him rape other women. Phoolan's position becomes a symbol of Baboo's authority over
Vikram and his men, and by extension, of the authority of all thakurs. Vikram tells Baboo to marry her if
he wants her so much.

One night when Baboo attempted to rape Phoolan, Vikram killed him and assumed the gang leadership.
Phoolan became Vikram's second wife. The gang ransacked the village where Phoolan's husband lived.
Phoolan stabbed her estranged husband, and dragged him in front of the villagers. The gang left him lying
almost dead by the road, with a note as a warning for older men who marry young girls.

The gang went to see an ash-covered sadhu, a holy man that they had visited before. According to the
dacoit code, one-third of their profits went to the gods. When Vikram prostrated himself, and told him the
circumstances of Baboo's death, a devotee said the sadhu was pleased.
Vikram trained her to be a dacoit, showed her how to use a rifle and scramble up the ravines. Phoolan
marvelled at the fact that without laws and restrictions, these bandits behaved respectfully; whereas in
the villages, with all their customs and duties, men so often acted like dogs. Through Vikram, she was
learning the dacoit code, and the art of leading a gang.

The gang would travel at night; during the day, Vikram often read from a holy book. He told Phoolan to
pick an emblem, and she chose Durga. Phoolan made a conscious decision to represent this goddess.

Later, Shri Ram got out of jail and claimed the leadership of the gang. He belonged to the Thakur caste,
and would make sexual advances towards Phoolan. This led to tensions between Shri Ram and Vikram,
who made him apologize to Phoolan. When the gang would ransack a village, Shri Ram would beat and
insult the Mallahs. This displeased the Mallahs in the gang, many of whom left the gang. When Shri Ram
got a dozen Thakurs to join the gang, Vikram suggested the gang be divided into two, but Shri Ram
refused. Shortly afterwards, Shri Ram and other Thakur members in the gang attempted to kill Phoolan
and Vikram, who managed to escape. However, later they successfully killed Vikram Mallah, abducted
Phoolan and locked her up in the Behmai village. Phoolan Devi was raped by many men in Behmai. After
three weeks, she managed to escape with two other Mallahs from Vikram's gang, helped by a lower-caste
villager. She gathered a gang of Mallahs that she led with Man Singh, a member of Vikram's former gang.
The gang carried out a series of violent robberies in north and central India, mainly targeting upper-caste
people and shared the loot with the lower-caste people.

When Phoolan's gang failed to find all the kidnappers after an exhaustive search, she ordered her gang
members to line up all the Thakur men in the village and shoot them. The dacoits opened fire and killed
twenty-two Thakur men, most of whom were not involved in her kidnapping or rape. Later, Phoolan Devi
claimed that she herself didn't kill anybody in Behmai – all the killings were carried out by her gang
members.

The Behmai massacre was followed by a massive police manhunt that failed to locate Phoolan Devi.
V. P. Singh, the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, resigned in the wake of the Behmai killings. Phoolan
Devi began to be called the Bandit Queen. Dolls of Phoolan Devi dressed as Hindu goddess Durga were
sold in market towns in Uttar Pradesh. She was glorified by much of the Indian media.

Even two years after the Behmai massacre, the police weren't able to capture Phoolan Devi. The Indira
Gandhi Government decided to negotiate to surrender. By this time, Phoolan Devi was in poor health and
most of her gang members were dead. In February 1983, she agreed to surrender to the authorities.
However, she said that she didn't trust the Uttar Pradesh police and insisted that she would only
surrender to the Madhya Pradesh Police. She also insisted that she would lay down her arms only before
Mahatma Gandhi and Goddess Durga, and not to the police. She also required the conditions like she
would not get the death penalty. Her gang members should not get more than eight years in jail. Her
brother should be given a government job. Her father should receive a plot of land. Her entire family
should be escorted by the police to her surrender ceremony.

An unarmed police chief met her at a hiding place in the Chambal ravines. They walked their way to
Bhind, where she laid her rifle before the portraits of Gandhi and Goddess Durga. The onlookers included
a crowd of around 10,000 people and 300 police officer and the then chief minister of Madhya Pradesh,
Mr. Arjun Singh. Three hundred police were waiting to arrest her and other members of her gang who
surrendered at the same time.

Phoolan Devi was charged with 48 crimes, including thirty charges of dacoity (banditry) and kidnapping.
Her trial was delayed for eleven years, which she served in the prison. During this period, she was
operated on for ovarian cysts and ended up with an involuntary hysterectomy. She was finally released
on parole in 1994. Then she launched Eklavya Sena, a group that was aimed at teaching lower-caste
people the art of self-defense. She married Umaid Singh, her sister's husband and a New Delhi business
contractor.

Shekhar Kapur made a movie Bandit Queen (1994) about Phoolan Devi's life up through her 1983
surrender. Although Phoolan Devi is a heroine in the film, she fiercely disputed its accuracy and fought to
get it banned in India. She even threatened to immolate herself outside a theater if the film were not
withdrawn. Eventually, she settled a suit against the filmmakers for about $60,000. The film brought her
international recognition. At this time, she was re-indicted for murder and other charges.

Though she was illiterate, Phoolan composed her autobiography titled The Bandit Queen of India: An
Indian Woman's Amazing Journey From Peasant to International Legend, with help of two international
authors, Marie-Therese Cuny and Paul Rambali.

Star Shakur has referred to herself as being a "Bandit Queen" once in a Youth Rebel Movement inspired
and acknowledged by the movie and story of Phoolan Devi. Star Shakur's alias and first EP Album entitled
"The Bandit Queen" was named after this movie.

Phoolan Devi is the subject of the Boxcar Satan song Shoot Down The Sun from their 2003 album
Upstanding and Indigent.

1996, Phoolan Devi ran for a seat in the Lok Sabha as a Samajwadi Party candidate and was elected. She
was re-elected in 1999. In a 1999 interview, she explained her political objectives, stating, "My main goal
is that things that only the rich and privileged have enjoyed until now should also be given to the poor: for
example, drinking water, electricity, schools and hospitals... I’d like there to be seats reserved for women
in government posts. Women should be educated in schools. And people should not be forcing them to get
married at a very young age...the most important thing is equality. So that people can get employment,
they can get proper food and drink, and also to be educated. And especially women – now they are really
treated very lowly, like shoes! They should be treated on an equal basis. And like other countries that
have progressed and have comforts, I also want my country and people to progress that way." During her
election campaign, she was criticized by the women widowed in the Behmai massacre. Kshatriya
Swabhimaan Andolan Samanvay Committee (KSASC), a Kshatriya organization, held a statewide
campaign to protest against her.

Some people thought she proved ineffective as an MP. She got a train stopped at unscheduled stops to
meet her acquaintances in Uttar Pradesh. The railway minister, Ram Vilas Paswan played down the train
incident and ordered only a nominal enquiry. Once, she visited the Gwalior jail (where she was
imprisoned) to meet her former inmates. When the jail officers didn't let her in due to the visiting hours
rules, she abused them. Later, a suspension order was issued against the jail officials involved in the
incident, without any explanation.

In 1998, Phoolan Devi claimed she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by some members of the
British Parliament. She lost a bid for re-election in 1998, but was returned to office the following year.

On 25 July 2001, Phoolan Devi was fatally shot as she got out of her car at the gate of her New Delhi
residence. The assailants also wounded her bodyguard and escaped in an auto rickshaw.

Sher Singh Rana, Dheeraj Rana, and Rajbir were accused of the crime. Sher Singh Rana allegedly surrendered in Dehradun. He
confessed to the murder, saying he was avenging the deaths of 22 Kshatriyas at Behmai. He escaped from Tihar Jail in 2004, but was
captured in April 2006 from Kolkata and sent to Rohini Jail, Delhi. The same year, the KSASC decided to honour Rana for "upholding
the dignity of the Kshatriya community" and "drying the tears of the widows of Behmai". On 19 January 2007, Balender Singh,
Phoolan's bodyguard who had been witness to the shooting, identified Dheeraj and Sher Singh as the people who had fired on him
and Phoolan respectively. Balender Singh was cross-examined on 2 February 2007.

Books on Phoolan Devi

 Devi: The Bandit Queen, by Richard Shears, Isobelle Gidley. Published by Allen & Unwin, 1984. ISBN 0049200976.
 India's Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi, by Mala Sen. Published by Pandora, 1993. ISBN .
 I, Phoolan Devi: The Autobiography of India's Bandit Queen, by Phoolan Devi, Marie-Thé rè se Cuny, Paul Rambali. Published
by Little, Brown and Co., 1996. ISBN 0316879606.
 Moxham, Roy (3 June 2010). Outlaw: India's Bandit Queen and Me. Rider. ISBN 9781846041822.

Phoolan Devi, with Marie-Therese Cuny, and Paul Rambali, "The Bandit Queen of India: An Indian Woman's Amazing Journey from
Peasant to International Legend" Guilford, Connecticut: The Lyons Press, 2006 ISBN 978-1-59228-641-6 Notes: (1) Copyright 2003
by Robert Laffont. (2) First Lyons Press paperback 1st edition (1 August 2006) (3) The Lyons Press An imprint of The Globe Pequot
Press.