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The Bandit Queen

Outside the remote village of Behmai on the Yamuna River in northern India, a band of 24 heavily armed dacoits (bandits) waited quietly for the instructions of their leader. It was the early morning of 14 February 1981. Amazingly, they were led by a woman; one who had become famed throughout the area for her determination and ruthlessness. Her name was Phoolan Devi. The 18-year-old was slight in build but strong and agile. She wore a military-style khaki jacket, denim jeans and zippered boots. Her dark straight hair was cut short to her neck and a red bandana (the Indian symbol of vengeance) was tied around her head, covering her hairline and brows. She carried a Mauser rifle with twelve 7.62mm rounds in the clip and a bandolier with 50 spare rounds of ammunition slung across her chest.

Phoolan's dacoits were from three different gangs, but their goal was the same: to hunt down the treacherous Ram brothers, Sri Ram Singh and Lala Ram Singh. Sri Ram was a vicious gang leader and the focus of Phoolan Devi's lust for vengeance. He had murdered her lover, Vikram Mallah, as she slept by his side. Now, she hoped, it was what the Americans call ‘pay back time.' In fact, what transpired was another St. Valentine's Day massacre.

Though still a teenager, Phoolan Devi had been victimized all her life by the caste system in India. She had been treated as either a servant or a sex object. And because she fought the men who oppressed her, she had been frequently beaten and raped. Her many supporters among India's poor stated that she did not steal for her own gain, but like the legendary 12th century English outlaw Robin Hood, she stole from the rich to give to the poor. This is a highly romanticized view, but it was also a wonderful political platform for her reincarnation as a leading light in India's parliament.

The life story of Phoolan Devi reads like a morality tale. She is considered by some to have been a pioneering icon for India's poor and oppressed both as a dacoit and afterwards as a politician passionately concerned with women's rights. Others viewed her as not much more than a bloodthirsty murderer, who nevertheless managed to achieve immortality never before seen in a country that boasts the world's largest democracy in the second-largest national population on earth.

Dacoit gangs have a long history of preying on travelers and looting villages in the Northern states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, which borders on Nepal. The region has wild, rugged landscapes full of mountains, maze-like ravines, desolate valleys and uncharted jungles. Even today, bus convoys loaded with merchants and tourists travel with armed guards to fend off the bandit raiders.

Phoolan Devi had a mission in life. She had never known love or respect until she met Vikram Mallah. She swore never to rest until she had killed his murderer, and now it seemed that after months of searching, she had finally run him to ground. The woman known as ‘The Bandit Queen' was born in January 1963 in the village of Gorha Ka Purwa in Uttar Pradesh, the second child in a family of four sisters and a younger brother. Her father, Devidin Devi worked as a sharecropper and was considered to be cursed for having fathered so many daughters.

But her father's family was not the poorest in the village because he owned an acre of land and the huge Neem tree that grew on it. The valuable timber that could be derived from the tree was the family nest egg. Phoolan came to love the tree as she grew up under its majestic shade. Devidin Devi should have been wealthier, but his crafty older brother Bihari had seized his inheritance of 15 acres with the empty promise that he would care for his brother's family. When Bihari died, his estate was left to his oldest son, Phoolan's cousin Mayadin. Phoolan never trusted this man and her fears were justified when he had the Neem tree cut down whilst Phoolan's family were out. Mayadin sold the wood for a profit and Phoolan was aghast when her father did not protest. In Indian society, women could never dare challenge a man, but ten-year-old Phoolan was fearless. She confronted her scheming cousin and demanded that he compensate her father for the tree. When she taunted him in public, and staged a sit-in on his land, he struck her with a brick, knocking her out cold.

But the beating did not silence her. Phoolan continued to harangue Mayadin until he arranged to have her married to a man named Putti Lal who lived 200 miles away. She was just eleven years old; her prospective husband 42. Phoolan refused to sleep with the man, who then relegated her to the worst household duties, such as cleaning the toilet. Phoolan ran away and walked back to her village. Her mother Moola was so horrified and ashamed that she told Phoolan to commit suicide by jumping into the village well. The young girl, now rejected by her own family, supported herself by working as a washerwoman's assistant.

In 1979 Mayadin accused Phoolan of stealing from his house. She denied the accusation, but the police arrested her anyway. While in custody she was raped and beaten repeatedly, then thrown into a rat-infested cell. Her hatred for her cousin grew under this harsh treatment, as she knew he was behind the police action.

In July of that year a gang of dacoits under the notorious Babu Gujar set up camp outside Phoolan's village. She was released from jail and either joined the gang, or was kidnapped – there are conflicting accounts of what exactly happened. It is possible that Mayadin bribed the dacoits to take her away. The gangsters took her into nearby ravines and she was raped and brutalized for 72 hours, mainly by Gujar himself. Gujar's lieutenant, Vikram Mallah, had admired Phoolan since he first saw her and when his boss ignored his pleas to stop the torment, he shot and killed the dacoit leader. Inevitably, Vikram and Phoolan became lovers as Vikram took over the bandit gang.

Phoolan now knew love for the first time, and was so enthralled with her new life with Vikram that she had a rubber stamp made that identified her as ‘Phoolan Devi, dacoit beauty, beloved of Vikram Mallah, Emperor of Dacoits'. The fact that she was illiterate apparently made no difference. Vikram was also Phoolan's mentor. She learned how to use a rifle and carried one wherever she went. She dressed in the khaki uniform that Indian bandits favored and for once in her life, her bold and fearless behavior was valued as Vikram showed her how to kill, steal and kidnap for profit. Traveling around an 8,000 square-mile area of jungles, ravines and sandy ridges, the Vikram-Devi gang raided upper-caste villages and looted trains and bus convoys. Her supporters state that Phoolan used banditry to correct social inequality by redistributing wealth to the poor and oppressed. She was motivated by the spirit of the goddess Durga, and before and after every raid she found a temple to pray to Durga for strength and success. Then they were joined by Sri Ram (who had spent time in prison with Vikram) and his brother Lala Ram, and the gang inevitably split into two factions.

One night in June 1980 the gang was en route to a remote village wedding where Phoolan planned to deliver a dowry to the bride. As they walked by torchlight, Vikram was shot as he paused to eat a melon. Phoolan tied a cloth around his torso to staunch the bleeding. Though she could not prove it, she knew that Sri Ram had fired the shot – the wily bandit had dropped behind with his brother and henchmen. The badly wounded dacoit was taken to a doctor who did what he could, but said it was too risky to remove the bullet which had lodged near his spine. Amazingly, Vikram slowly recovered and two weeks later was able to slip into the jungle and return to his gang as rumors spread that he was already dead.

The gang proceeded to raid and loot through the Chambal River Valley, but tensions within the group festered. Phoolan slept very little, keeping an eye on Sri Ram through the nights, with her rifle by her side. Then one night while she and Vikram slept together in a tent while a gentle rain fell, Phoolan was roused from sleep by a loud gunshot. Vikram, dying rapidly from a chest wound from a 9mm automatic pistol, whispered his last words to her: “Phoolan. It's him. The bastard shot me...” She looked up and saw Sri Ram holstering his handgun. She, Vikram and all loyal members had been drugged with chloroform, which the gang often used for kidnappings. And this time, Sri Ram had made sure of killing the dacoit leader.

Phoolan, still disorientated from the drug, was clubbed, seized and tied up. She was taken by river to the nearest village, where Sri Ram displayed her naked, and declared that she had killed her lover while he slept. He then raped her, and most of the men of the village, who were higher caste Thakurs, joined in the sport. During the following days, Sri Ram and his men took her to other villages where the same brutality was meted out. “I was paraded in front of the village men,” related Phoolan in her autobiography ‘I, Phoolan Devi'. “Each time, Sri Ram called me a Mallah whore. He said that I had murdered Vikram, and hurling me to the ground, told the men to use me as they pleased.”

This went on for three weeks. When she was at the Thakur village of Behmai, Sri Ram led her around on a leash like a dog. She was made to fetch water from the well, and was then beaten and raped by many of the local men. But one night an old Brahmin man rescued her, sneaking her out of Behmai in a bullock cart. A shepherd woman then nursed her back to health in the jungle.

Phoolan joined a gang of dacoits from the Gadariya caste and stayed long enough to kidnap two wealthy merchants and earn 50,000 rupees in ransom. Then she started her own gang, helped by a Muslim gangster named Baba Mustakim. Man Singh, who soon became her next lover, was now her lieutenant, and the quest for vengeance against Sri Ram began in earnest.

Phoolan Devi, the self-anointed ‘Dacoit Queen' led raids throughout Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh where she was also the self-appointed avenger for women's rights. Whenever she heard of a rape, a forced abortion, or the coerced suicide of a disgraced woman, Phoolan took it upon herself to punish the men responsible. Her favourite punishment was to have her victims staked down, and then smash their testicles into pulp with a hammer. She once castrated and cut off the hands of an old Thakur who tortured women and enjoyed sex with young boys. This act of retribution was performed before a picture of the goddess Durga.

Finally, she had information that Sri Ram and his gang were holed up in Behmai, the village where she had been abused like a dog. She led her gang to the outskirts of Ingwi, a nearby village, and set up camp. At dawn she attacked with a third of her force and two flanking groups waiting for any villagers who tried to get away. The plan worked well, but when her men caught all who fled, they found that the Ram brothers were not among them. Phoolan seized a bullhorn and shouted, “I know that Sri Ram and his brother are hiding here. If you don't hand them over to me, I will stick my rifle into your butts and tear them apart! This is Phoolan Devi speaking. Victory to Durga the Mother Goddess!”

All the Thakur men were rounded up and brutally interrogated by Phoolan, who jabbed her rifle into their groins. When this did not get results, she ordered her men to march the Thakurs to the nearby river where they were forced to kneel on the banks. At a signal, the gunmen opened fire. Those that tried to run away were shot in the river, which soon ran red with blood. Bodies keeled over and fell lifeless into the mud. When the shooting stopped, 22 of the 30 unfortunate Thakurs were dead. In her autobiography, Phoolan related that she had not been part of the execution party: she had remained in the village, searching for the hated Ram brothers, she stated. Witnesses said that this was a lie – the Bandit Queen was seen in the middle of the firing squad, cheerfully pumping rounds into the men kneeling by the riverside.

The nation was shocked. The massacre at Behmai was the most heinous crime ever committed by a dacoit gang in the history of modern India. A low-caste woman leading a killing rampage on a group of high-caste men was unthinkable. This crime demanded the full attention of the authorities and Phoolan Devi overnight became the most wanted criminal in India.

Ms Devi went into hiding, but when she learned that the police had imprisoned her family (in effect holding them hostage); she decided to negotiate her surrender. Over a year, she haggled out a deal with Rajendra Chaturvedi, the police superintendent of Bhind district. On a February evening in 1983, almost two years to the day from the massacre at Behmai, Phoolan Devi emerged from the ravines with her gang and turned herself in. A crowd of some 8,000 locals cheered for their female Robin Hood, the Bandit Queen of India, as she laid down her weapons and surrendered.

Inevitably, the authorities reneged on the deal she had brokered, and Phoolan spent more than eleven years in prison without trial in New Delhi. But she did not waste her time there: she learned to read and write, and became politically astute. During this period a film of her life named ‘Bandit Queen', (starring Seema Biswas), was released. It gained much critical acclaim abroad, but Ms Devi disliked it so intensely that she sued the film company, director and producer.

An ambitious lower-caste politician secured her release from prison in 1994. Astonishingly, Phoolan announced that she would run for a seat in India's lower Parliament House (Lok Shaba), promising to be a strong voice for women and the poor of Uttar Pradesh. Running a shrewd campaign with all her ruthless passion, she soon had a big following and won election by a landslide in May 1996. She was now 33 years old and rather rounder than in her outlaw days, but the transformation of Phoolan Devi was complete.

She enjoyed a successful career in politics until 25 July 2001 when she walked home from Parliament after the morning session to eat lunch. Three assassins lurking near her New Delhi home gunned her down in broad daylight. Only one man was captured. He was Sher Singh Rana, who said that he was seeking retribution for the Behmai massacre, but local police suspected that he was a hit man paid by her estranged husband, Ummed Singh, whom she had threatened to cut out of her Will.

Shortly before her brutal assassination Phoolan had the satisfaction of learning that her most hated enemy, Sri Ram Singh had been shot dead by his own brother Lala Ram in a dispute over a woman. He died as violently as he had lived. And although India's famous Bandit Queen had put aside her rifle for a political career she also could not escape her violent past. At the age of 38, she lay dead in the dust, her body punctured with six gunshot wounds.

(Research: www.crimelibrary.com/Phoolan_devi).

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