Phoolan Devi Biography

Popularly known as the ‘Bandit Queen of India’, Phoolan Devi transcended her traumatic life to become the Member of Parliament. She was born into a poor household considered girls as a burden.

She was married off at a very young age to a man much older. Her husband committed a lot of atrocity on her, which eventually forced her to abandon her husband. She had to undergo further humiliation as she was abused at several other occasions, before she decided to become a gun-wielding dacoit.

She became a dangerous and dreaded dacoit before surrendering to spend 11 years in prison. After her release from the prison, Phoolan decided to lead a dignified life and became a politician. However, she could not spend many years of her life as a politician as she was shot dead outside her Delhi bungalow in 2001.

Phoolan Devi wrote her autobiography with the help of Paul Rambali and Marie-Therese Cuny. Several films and documentaries have been made on her life story. ‘Bandit Queen’ (1994) is the most notable of the lot.

Phoolan Devi was an Indian Dacoit who belonged to the Uttar Pradesh region of India. She was known to be a very brave and strong woman, who had the courage to fight back the wrong. She herself punished all her rape victims and shot them dead by forming a line. She was a known dacoit in the Indian history who had a number of murder, kidnapping and lottery charges against her.

Phoolan Devi All Facts

• Phoolan Devi, popularly known as “Bandit Queen”, was an Indian female rights activist, bandit and politician from the Samajwadi Party.
• Phoolan Devi was born on 10 August 1963 in Jalaun.
• Phoolan Devi endured poverty, child marriage and abusive marriage before living a life of crime.
•  After Phoolan Devi was raped several times by her husband, teenage Phoolan Devi tried to escape by running away and joining a gang of bandits.
• Phoolan Devi took the lives of 22 Thakurs to avenge the rape.
• Phoolan escaped from imprisonment for two years after the massacre and after that she and some of her remaining gang members surrendered to the police in 1983.
• In 1994, the state government led by Samajwadi Party’s Mulayam Singh Yadav summarily dropped all charges against him and Phoolan was released.
• Phoolan Dev stood for election to the Parliament as a candidate of the Samajwadi Party and was twice elected to the Lok Sabha as the Member of Parliament for Mirzapur.

Body Measurements

Facts

• Phoolan Devi’s used to study in her part-time.

• She once said in an interview that she doesn’t want to be a woman in her next birth.

• When she escaped after sufferings from her husband’s home, in order to teach Phoolan a lesson for the disgrace she caused to their family, her cousins sent her to prison accusing her of stealing their belongings. There she was abused physically. They let her off with a warning to behave herself in the future with her family.

• In 1969, her husband abandoned her few months after the ceremony of Gauna (a ceremony where married women start cohabiting with their husband). She was considered a social outcast as it was a taboo in Indian society for a woman to her husband or a husband to a woman.

• She composed her autobiography entitled “I, Phoolan Devi” with the help of international authors Marie-Therese Cuny and Paul Rambali.

• In her autobiography, she describes her husband of  a “very bad character.”

• She learned to use the rifle with the help of Vikram Mallah.

• According to a legend, Vikram Mallah taught her,

If you are going to kill, kill twenty, not just one. For if you kill twenty, your fame will spread; if you kill only one, they will hang you as a murderess.”

• Phoolan was the only woman in the gang of dacoits. She would go to Durga Temple after every crime she had committed and thank the goddess for her protection.

• After the manhunt carried out for Phoolan turned unsuccessful, she was glorified by the sections of Media and came to be known as ‘The Bandit Queen.’

• V. P. Singh, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh from 1980-82, had to resign from his post because of Behmai massacre.

• It was this time that she was acknowledged as Devi by reverent media and hence, came to be known as “Phoolan Devi.”

• Indira Gandhi Government negotiated a surrender with Phoolan through Rajendra Chaturvedi, SP in Bhind at that time.

• She agreed to surrender with a condition that she would only surrender to Madhya Pradesh Police and not Uttar Pradesh Police. With few more conditions that included not to impose any death penalty on her fellow gang members, the term for other gang members not to exceed eight years, a plot of land to be given to her, and her family should be escorted by police to witness her surrender.

• She had a condition more that she would lay down her hands only before the pictures of Mahatma Gandhi and goddess Durga; not to police.

• She was first released on parole in 1994 after intercession by Vishambhar Prasad Nishad, the leader of the Nishadha community (another name for the Mallah community of boatmen and fisherfolk).

• During her course in prison, Phoolan Devi was operated on ovarian cysts and underwent a hysterectomy.

• The doctor reportedly joked about the operation saying that they don’t want to breed more Phoolan Devi’s.

• On 15 February 1995, Phoolan Devi and her husband Umeed Singh converted to Buddhism in Deekshabhoomi, the famous Buddhist site.

• Phoolan was shot dead outside her Delhi bungalow by three gunmen. She was hit nine times, on head, chest, shoulder, and right arm.

• The gunmen fled the scene in a Maruti 800 car and later abandoned the car in mid-way boarding an auto rickshaw.

•  The police recovered a Webley & Scott pistol and an improvised firearm, an IOF .32 Revolver from the spot, along with nine empty and 15 live rounds, from the car. But before any forensic tests could be performed on them, revolvers disappeared.

• Phoolan’s sister Munni Devi later accused her husband Ummed Singh of being involved in Phoolan’s murder.

• Sher Singh Rana was the main accuse of the case, who walked into the police station and confessed his crime. He said that he was motivated to take revenge on her for her actions to kill upper caste men as a leader of the bandit gang.

• Sher Singh Rana escaped Tihar Jail and reportedly escaped to Kandahar in Afghanistan, two years later he was caught in Kolkata. He even filed papers to fight elections for Uttar Pradesh assembly election in 2012, which he lost. Delhi High Court granted him bail in 2016.

• Sher Singh Rana was helped by another Uttar Pradesh-based Subhash Thakur, who gave him Rs. 15,000 to Rs. 20,000 per month as a personal expense.

• Sher Singh Rana has written his autobiography  entitled “Jail Diary: Tihar Se Kabul-Kandhar Tak
  “of being in prison for the murder of Phoolan Devi.

• Following the assault on well known Indian film director Sanjay Leela Bhansali in Jaipur on the sets of Padmaavat (2018). Reportedly, it came to light that Sher Singh Rana threatened him that he would be slapped if he did not budge.

• Shekhar Kapur made the movie “Bandit Queen (1983)” on her life and 1983 surrender. The film brought Phoolan Devi an international recognition.

• Author-activist Arundhati Roy in her film review entitled “The Great Indian Rape Trick”, questioned the right to “restage the rape of a living woman without her permission” charging Shekhar Kapur for exploiting Phoolan Devi and misinterpreting her life’s story and its meaning.