Phoolan Devi

A graphic novel titled Phoolan Devi, Rebel Queen by Claire Fauvel was released by NBM Publishing in April 2020.

Devi was taken to a nearby hospital but was declared dead. The prime suspect, Sher Singh Rana, later surrendered to the police. Rana allegedly claimed to have murdered Devi in revenge for the upper-caste men she gunned down in the Behmai massacre. In the latest ruling, on 14 August 2014, the court sentenced Rana to life in prison and a fine.

Sher Singh Rana, the main accused, was convicted by Delhi court on 8 August 2014. However, the other ten accused were acquitted. Rana was convicted of the offences under Sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder) and 34 (common intention) under the IPC. The judge had fixed 12 August 2014, as the date for arguments and pronouncement of sentence. On 14 August 2014 Rana was sentenced to a life term by a Delhi.

This time around Phoolan married Ummed Singh. Ummed Singh contested the 2004 and 2009 elections on Indian National Congress's ticket. In 2014 he contested election on Bahujan Samaj Party's ticket. Phoolan's sister Munni Devi later accused him of being involved in Phoolan's murder.

At 1:30 p.m. IST (08:30 UTC) on 26 July 2001, Devi was shot dead by three masked gunmen outside of her Delhi bungalow. She was hit nine times, variously in the head, chest, shoulder and right arm. Her personal security guard, Balinder Singh, was shot in his right chest and right arm, who returned fire with a 9-mm service pistol when the gunmen fled the scene in a Maruti 800 car. They abandoned the car mid-way and boarded 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.

On 15 February 1995, Phoolan Devi and her husband Ummed Singh embraced Buddhism at the famous Buddhist site Deekshabhoomi.

In 1995, one year after her release, Phoolan was invited by Dr. Ramadoss (founder of Pattali Makkal Katchi) to participate in the conference about alcohol prohibition and women Pornography. This was her first conference after her release which began her Indian politics. However, Phoolan stood for election to the 11th Lok Sabha from the Mirzapur constituency in Uttar Pradesh. She contested the election as a member of the Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav, whose government had withdrawn all cases against her and summarily released her from prison. She won the election and served as an MP during the term of the 11th Lok Sabha (1996–98). She lost her seat in the 1998 election but was re-elected in the 1999 election and was the sitting member of parliament for Mirzapur when she was assassinated.

Phoolan was charged with as many as forty-eight crimes, including thirty charges of dacoity (banditry) and kidnapping. Her trial was delayed for eleven years, during which time she remained in prison as an undertrial. During this period, she was operated on for ovarian cysts and underwent a hysterectomy. The doctor of the hospital reportedly joked that "We don't want Phoolan Devi breeding more Phoolan Devis". She was finally 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). The Government of Uttar Pradesh, led by Mulayam Singh Yadav, withdrew all cases against her. This move sent shock-waves across India and became a matter of public discussion and controversy.

Shekhar Kapur made a movie Bandit Queen (1994) about Phoolan Devi's life up to her 1983 surrender, based on Mala Sen's 1993 book India's Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi. 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 withdrew her objections after the producer Channel 4 paid her £40,000. The film brought her 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", and charged Shekhar Kapur with exploiting Phoolan Devi and misrepresenting both her life and its meaning.

In 1985 another low budget Bengali movie Phoolan Devi was released loosely based on Phoolan's life. This film was directed by Ashok Roy and starred by Suresh Oberoi, Rita Bhaduri and Joy Banerjee.

Phoolan evaded capture for two years after the massacre before she and her few surviving gang-members surrendered to the police in 1983. She was charged with 48 crimes, including multiple murders, plunder, arson and kidnapping for ransom. Phoolan spent the next eleven years in jail, as the various charges against her were tried in court. In 1994, the state government headed by Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party summarily withdrew all charges against her, and Phoolan was released. She then stood for election to parliament as a candidate of the Samajwadi Party and was twice elected to the Lok Sabha as the member for Mirzapur. In 2001, she was shot dead at the gates of her official bungalow (allotted to her as MP) in New Delhi by former rival bandits whose kinsmen had been slaughtered at Behmai by her gang. The 1994 film Bandit Queen (made around the time of her release from jail) is loosely based on her life until that point.

Two years after the Behmai massacre, the police had still not captured Phoolan. The Indira Gandhi Government decided to negotiate a surrender. By this time, Phoolan was in poor health and most of her gang members were dead, some having died at the hands of the police, some others at the hands of rival gangs. 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 the pictures of Mahatma Gandhi and the Hindu goddess Durga, not to the police. She laid down four further conditions:

Several months after her escape from Behmai, Phoolan returned to the village to seek revenge. On the evening of 14 February 1981, at a time when a wedding was in progress in the village, Phoolan and her gang marched into Behmai dressed as police officers. Phoolan demanded that her tormentors "Sri Ram" and "Lala Ram" be produced. she allegedly said, The two men could not be found. And so Devi rounded up all the young men in the village and stood them in a line before a well. They were then marched in file to the river. At a green embankment they were ordered to kneel. There was a burst of gunfire and 22 men lay dead.

Within a few months, Phoolan, this time no longer a virgin, again returned to her parents. Shortly afterwards, her in-laws returned the gifts that Phoolan's parents had given them and sent word that under no circumstances would they accept Phoolan back again. This was in 1979 and Phoolan was only a few months past her sixteenth birthday. She later claimed in her autobiography that her husband was a man of "very bad character." A wife leaving her husband, or being abandoned by her husband, is a serious taboo in rural India, and Phoolan was marked as a social outcast.

Shortly after her final sojourn in her husband's house, and in the same year (1979), Phoolan fell in with one such gang of dacoits. How exactly this happened is unclear; some say that she was kidnapped by them because her "spirited temperament," estrangement from her own family and outspoken rejection of her husband had attracted the attention of the bandits, while others say that she "walked away from her life." In her autobiography, she merely says "kismet ko yehi manzoor tha" ("it was the dictate of fate") that she become part of a gang of bandits.

Phoolan Devi (10 August 1963 – 26 July 2001), popularly known as "Bandit Queen", was an Indian bandit and later a member of parliament.