The Bandit Queen

There’s drama, there’s a tragedy, there’s a pinch of romance, there are unpredictable twists and turns, there’s vengeance, there’s retribution….Phoolan Devi’s life was no less than a thriller.

Phoolan Devi. Illustrated by Miloni Munipally: Visual Storyteller at ThisDay

Born in the low caste Mallah (boatmen) community in the small village of Ghura ka Purwa, in Uttar Pradesh, Phoolan Devi was subjected to the triple subjugation of caste, class, and gender. Once, her cousins persuaded her father to cut down a huge Neem tree in their small patch of land to increase the land under cultivation. Phoolan, who liked the tree very much and played around it with her friends, vehemently refused. She gathered a few other girls from the village and staged a dharna to protest against its cutting, so resolute in her demands that she did not move until she was beaten till she lost consciousness. Was she strong-willed or stubborn?

At the very tender age of 11, she was given away to a man, Puttilal Mallah who was nearly three times her age. It was a cruel arrangement and she was put through remorseless sexual and physical abuse by her husband and his family. Having undergone enough, she decided to go back to her natal house for the second and final time at the age of 16. Some of the sources also state that she was abandoned by Puttilal near the Yamuna at midnight who left her there waiting never to return. Once she was back in her village, she was perceived as an outlaw in the community as it was and still is taboo in India for a wife to leave her husband irrespective of the conditions she has to go through. Was this an attempt to emancipate herself from the inhuman conditions she was in or was this an attempt to bring disgrace to her family?

At the age of 20, she was kidnapped by a dacoit gang leader, Babu Gujjar. The possibility that her uncle and cousin, Mayadin paid to have her abducted cannot be denied for the clashes that existed between their families. Babu Gujjar was a Thakur and belonged to the upper caste. He, along with his gangmen have been reported to have raped her multiple times and even humiliated her in front of her parents. One of the gang members, Vikram Mallah, was sympathetic towards her and tried to protect her from the wrath of the other barbaric men. She soon grew a liking towards Vikram and it caused contention within the gang members. Even after repeated warnings from Vikram to leave Phoolan alone, Babu Gujjar continued to subject her to worse treatment. In an altercation, Vikram shot Babu Gujjar, and assumed the leadership of the gang that he now co-headed with Phoolan. Thus began her journey as the bandit queen amidst the ravines of the Chambal river.

It was not something she chose for herself or wanted to do but was compelled by her circumstances.

She had become strong as a rock, was undefeatable and burning within her was the hunger for revenge. She is reported to have publicly stabbed her husband, Puttilal for the harm he’d caused her as a warning to all onlookers. She participated in all activities of the dacoit gang including attacking and looting villages, committing highway robberies, and kidnapping wealthy people for ransom. She was an ardent worshipper of Goddess Durga and ensured that each of the gang members visited her temple after each crime they committed to thank the Goddess for providing protection to them.

Her stories have also been glorified by way of telling that she distributed most of the collected loot amongst the poor. Lower caste villagers, for whom she became a heroine, called her Dasyu Sundari (Beautiful Bandit). Was she indeed the Indian Robinhood?

After a few years, Vikram was killed in a scuffle with Rajput upper-caste men- Shri Ram and Lalla Ram. Phoolan was captured and taken to Behmai, a village in Uttar Pradesh where once again she was subjected to rape, humiliation, and physical abuse by these savage men. In an act of final indignity, she was paraded naked around the village. She managed to escape with the help of Man Singh, Vikram’s friend but resolved to take vengeance for the murder of her lover and the barbarous treatment she had been given. This formed the background for the infamous Behmai massacre that Phoolan had been held responsible for and caused a flurry all over the country and brought Phoolan into the limelight. On the evening of February 14, 1981, Phoolan with her gang marched into Behmai and called for Shri Ram and Lalla Ram to be produced before her. The villagers were asked to deposit all their gold and wealth in front of her. When the tormentors could not be found, she lined up twenty young men from the village and ordered them to be shot point-blank.

The police failed to capture the dacoit queen and her allies even two years after the massacre. It was then that the Government decided to negotiate a surrender. Given her poor health and fatigue among the gang members, she agreed to surrender to the authorities but under certain conditions that included that she would lay down her arms in front of no one but Goddess Durga and Gandhiji and so she did. Her surrender was witnessed by thousands of people and accompanied by 300 policemen. While they expected her to be a woman of hefty build given her grand stories, most of them were surprised to find out that India’s most infamous bandit queen was in fact less than 5 feet.

She was charged with forty-eight crimes that included kidnapping, murder, and robberies. She remained in prison for 11 years as an undertrial before she was released on parole in 1994. During this time, her popularity had grown leaps and bounds. A movie based on her life ‘Bandit Queen’ was released the same year she was released from prison. The film went on to win numerous awards and recognitions but was also criticized for misrepresentation of some of her life's incidents that showed her as a victim character and using creative liberty to tamper her image even further.

In an interesting turn of events, she joined the settled life of a politician after the state government of Uttar Pradesh withdrew all charges against her. In 1996, amidst both popular support and media controversy, she was elected to the Parliament from the Mirzapur constituency.

But as fate would have it, her complete transformation from a dacoit living a discreet life to a Member of Parliament who lived in the public eye, she was not far from danger and the remnants of her past continued to shadow her. On 25th July, 2001, somewhere around noon, she was shot dead with nine bullets hitting her head, arm, and chest outside the gates of her house in New Delhi. The assassination was claimed by Sher Singh Rana, a kinsman of the men murdered in the Behmai massacre as revenge.

Phoolan Devi, the infamous bandit queen. (10 August 1963- 25 July 2001); Image Source: Public Domain