Phoolan Devi, known as the Bandit Queen, was a bandit who surrendered to police, spent years in jail and was later elected to the Indian Parliament.
Born into a poor family in rural Uttar Pradesh (UP), Phoolan endured poverty and child marriage, which turned abusive. Having developed major differences with her parents and her husband, the teenage Phoolan escaped from home and joined a gang of bandits.
Phoolan was the only woman member of the gang. Her relationship with one gang member, coupled with the caste difference, caused a gunfight in which Phoolan's lover was killed. The victorious rival faction took Phoolan who was to their village, Behmai, and raped her repeatedly over several weeks.
Phoolan escaped from Behmai and rejoined the remnants of her dead lover’s faction, who were from the Mallaah (boatmen) community. She took a new lover from the gang and became a leader of the gang. She decided to avenge Behmai, where she had been gang-raped earlier. Her gang shot 22 men of the Rajput community of Behmai. This became one of the most sensational mass murders in India.
Phoolan evaded arrest for two years after the massacre before she and her few surviving gang-members surrendered to the neighbouring Madhya Pradesh state police in 1983. She was charged with 48 crimes, including multiple murders, plunder, arson and kidnapping for ransom.
Phoolan spent the next 11 years in jail. In 1994, the state government withdrew all charges against her, and Phoolan was released from the jail. She then contested election to Parliament as a candidate of the Samajwadi Party and was twice elected to the Lok Sabha as the member from the Mirzapur constituency.
Phoolan married Umaid Singh. On February 15, 1995, she and her husband embraced Buddhism at the famous Buddhist site Deekshabhoomi.
In 2001, Phoolan was shot dead at her official residence, allotted to her as an MP, in the Indian capital New Delhi.
The 1994 film Bandit Queen, made around the time of her release from jail, is loosely based on her life until that point.
Phoolan Devi with her lover Maan Singh on her way to surrender before the Madhya Pradesh Police in 1983.
Phoolan with her gang members before her surrender in 1983.
Phoolan acknowledges applause from crowds standing on the roof of a bus that transported her to the surrender site.
With gang members
Phoolan Devi greets audience with folded hands at her surrender site.
Phoolan Devi carrying a gun before she laid down arms before Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Arjun Singh.
Bandit Queen Phoolan Devi carrying her gun to surrender in front of images of the goddess Durga and of Mahatma Gandhi.
Phoolan Devi coming out of a Tihar Jail van at Tis Hazari Courts in New Delhi, where she was released.
One of some 60 contestants in Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh, Phoolan turned the poll contest here into another dramatic encounter with her upper-caste ‘oppressors’. Her main rival was the upper-caste sitting member Virendra Singh of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
‘I looted only those who looted me. Just as I did not tolerate oppression and took revenge against those who insulted me, I will not let you suffer insult silently,’ Phoolan Devi thundered like a veteran campaigner at poll rallies.
Phoolan’s first foray into politics. She was released on parole only a few years earlier on the intervention of her political mentor, then Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, who said that a woman who had spent more than a decade in jail on charges which are yet to be proved deserved sympathy.
Entering the Parliament. Two years after her release from prison, Phoolan Devi ran for Parliament from Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh as a member of the Samajwadi Party and was elected twice, once in 1996 and then again in 1999. While she was still in office, on July 25, 2001, Devi was shot dead by three masked gunmen outside her home in retaliation for the Behmai massacre.
With mother Mula Devi in New Delhi.
Phoolan Devi, with husband Umed Singh, holds a bow and arrow, a symbol of her newly launched political party.
Well-known Bollywood director Shekhar Kapur made the 1994 movie Bandit Queen, 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 theatre if the film were not withdrawn. Eventually, she withdrew her objections after the producer, British television network Channel 4, paid her £40,000. The film brought her international recognition.