Jump to content

Phoolan Devi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Mujinga (talk | contribs) at 18:22, 18 May 2023 (Phoolan Devi). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

For the 1985 film, see Phoolan Devi (film).
For the 1994 film, see Bandit Queen.

Phoolan Devi
File:Phoolan Devi-Bandit Queen.jpg
Member of Parliament for Mirzapur
In office
1996–1998
Preceded byVirendra Singh
Succeeded byVirendra Singh
In office
1999 – 25 July 2001
Preceded byVirendra Singh
Succeeded byRam Rati Bind
Personal details
Born
Phoolan Mallah

(1963-08-10)10 August 1963
Jalaun, Uttar Pradesh, India
Died25 July 2001(2001-07-25) (aged 37)
New Delhi, India
Manner of deathAssassination by shooting
Political partySamajwadi Party
Spouses
  • Puttilal
  • Umed Singh
Parents
  • Devidin (father)
  • Moola Devi (mother)
Occupation

Phoolan Devi (1963–2001), popularly known as the Bandit Queen, was an Indian dacoit (bandit) who later became a Member of Parliament, before being assassinated. She was a Mallah woman who grew up in poverty in a village in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where her family was on the losing side of a land dispute which caused them many problems. After being sexually abused repeatedly and married off at the age of 11, she joined a dacoit group, becoming its leader. Her gang robbed higher caste villages and held up trains and vehicles. She became a heroine to the lower castes for being a Robin Hood figure who punished her rapists and evaded capture by the authorities. Phoolan Devi was charged in absentia for the 1981 Behmai massacre, in which twenty Thakur men were executed, allegedly on her command; afterwards the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh resigned and calls to capture Devi were amplified. She surrendered two years later in a carefully negotiated settlement and served 11 years in Gwalior prison, without facing trial.

Phoolan Devi was released in 1994 after her charges were set aside, then she became a politician, standing as a Member of Parliament for the Samajwadi Party in 1996. She lost her seat in 1998 then regained it the following year; she was the incumbent at the time of her death in 2001. She was assassinated outside her house by Sher Singh Rana, who was eventually convicted for the murder in 2014. At the time of her death, she was still fighting against the reinstituted criminal charges. Phoolan Devi's worldwide fame grew after the release of the controversial 1994 film Bandit Queen, which told her life story in a way she herself did not approve of. Her life has also inspired several biographies and her dictated autobiography was entitled I, Phoolan Devi. There are varying accounts of her life because she told her story in different ways.

Early life

Phoolan Devi was born on 10 August 1963, in the village of Gorha Ka Purwa in Jalaun district, Uttar Pradesh, India.[a][2]: 42 [3] The land is filled with gorges and ravines, making it suitable for dacoits (bandits) to roam freely, and is crossed by the Yamuna and Chambal rivers.[4]: 244  Her family was poor and from the Mallah fisherman subcaste, which lies towards the bottom of the Hindu caste system in India, Mallahs being a subcaste of Shudra.[b][2]: 57 [7] Phoolan Devi's family survived by collecting dung cakes to burn as fuel and growing chickpeas, sunflowers and pearl millet.[2]: 32–34, 57 [8]

Hand-made parcels of manure laid outside in the sun to dry
The production of dung cakes in Uttar Pradesh

Phoolan Devi's mother was called Moola. Devi had four sisters and one brother; her father Devidin had one brother, who had a son called Maiyadin. Phoolan Devi's uncle and his son (her cousin) stole land from her father, by bribing the village leader to change the land records. Her family was compelled to live in a small house on the edge of the village; the uncle and son continued to harass the family and to steal their crops, aiming to drive them away from the village.[2]: 31  At the age of 10, Phoolan Devi decided to protest against the injustice by going to the disputed land. With her older sister Rukhmini, she sat in a field and ate the chickpeas growing there, saying the crop belonged to her family. Maiyadin ordered her to leave and when she did not, he beat her into unconsciousness; the village leader then decreed that her parents should also be beaten.[2]: 32–35 [9] In 2018, Phoolan Devi's mother told The Asian Age that she was still fighting to regain the land which Maiyadin had stolen from the family.[10]

Following these events, Phoolan Devi's parents decided to make an arranged marriage for her. She was married to a man called Puttilal, who offered 100 rupees, a cow and a bicycle as a dowry. It was agreed that she would live with him after three years, but less than three months later Puttilal came back and took her away.[2]: 44–45  He was three times her age.[11] She refused his sexual advances and became sick. When her parents came and collected her, they took her to a doctor who gave a diagnosis of measles.[2]: 45–46  For a wife to leave her husband was scandalous; preying on Phoolan Devi's parents' fears of disgrace, Maiyadin offered to ensure that Puttilal took her back if they signed a document. The family was illiterate and the parents were warned that it contained a clause giving Maiyadin legal rights to their land, so they refused to sign. Instead, her mother sent Devi to stay with a distant relative in the village of Teoga, where she met her recently married cousin Kailash, who ran errands for dacoits (also known locally as bahghis). They became close and had an affair, which resulted in Phoolan Devi being ordered by his wife to return to her own village.[2]: 46–48 [9][12]

When Phoolan Devi returned home to Gorha Ka Purwa, the second son of the village leader became infatuated with her and when she did not return his affections, he attacked her.[2]: 49, 51  Again, Phoolan Devi needed to leave the village and Maiyadin pressured the family to ask Puttilal to take her back, so Devi returned to her husband; in the meantime he had taken another wife who enjoyed mistreating her. After several years, Puttilal abandoned her beside the river and she again returned to the parental home.[2]: 52–53  In January 1979, Maiyadin destroyed the family's crops and began to chop down a neem tree on their land. When Phoolan Devi threw stones at him and wounded his face, she was arrested by the local police and detained for one month.[2]: 60–61  She later told The Atlantic that she was arrested because Maiyadin accused her of robbing him.[9] Her biographer Mala Sen asked if she had been raped at the station and Phoolan Devi replied "They had plenty of fun at my expense and beat the hell out of me too".[2]: 60–61 [13] Sen notes that it is common for victims of sexual assault to avoid or repress talking about what happened to them. Sen also observes that from the mid-1970s onwards, Indian feminist groups were recording many instances of women being attacked and murdered by men.[2]: 55, 61 [9]

Banditry

Bandit Queen

In July 1979, a gang of bandits led by Babu Gujjar came to seize Phoolan Devi from her family's home, for reasons she has explained in multiple ways.[9][12][1] Gujjar took her as his property and raped her every night. His second in command was Vikram Mallah, who became fond of Devi. After 72 hours, Vikram killed Gujjar and became leader of the gang.[9] He trained Phoolan Devi to use a rifle. Over the next year, the gang robbed trains and vehicles, and looted higher caste villages, sometimes using stolen police uniforms as a disguise.[4]: 247 [8] They lived in the ravines, constantly moving between places such as Devariya, Kanpur and Orai.[2]: 113  Vikram and Phoolan Devi fell in love and became a couple.[14]: 332  The gang returned to punish Puttilal and Devi beat him up.[2]: 99  She became wildly popular with the poor, who called her Dasyu Sundari (Beautiful Bandit) and was celebrated by most of the Indian mainstream media as a Robin Hood figure, who robbed the rich to give to the poor.[11][15][16] She was seen as an incarnation of the Hindu goddess Durga and a doll was produced of her in police uniform wearing a bandoleer.[11][17]

The crime spree was interrupted when a former leader of the gang, Shri Ram Singh, was released from prison together with his brother Lalla Ram Singh. They were from a higher caste than the rest of the gang, so when they rejoined it a power struggle began, which ended when Shri Ram murdered Vikram.[9][18] Without Vikram's protection, Phoolan Devi could not escape from Shri Ram, who took her to the remote village of Behmai where she was repeatedly raped by Thakur men (Thakurs being a subcaste of the higher Kshatriya caste); in a final indignity, she was forced to collect water for him from the well whilst naked, in front of the villagers.[2]: 57, 125–126  [9] The rapists included Chheda Singh.[19]

Behmai massacre

Phoolan Devi managed to escape and formed another gang with Man Singh.[2]: 137 [9] They lived on wild berries and produce stolen from cultivated fields.[2]: 183  The following year, she returned to Behmai with her gang on 14 February 1981. Speaking through a loudhailer, she demanded that the villagers hand over Shri Ram and Lalla Ram, then her gang went from house to house looting valuables.[2]: 150–151 [14]: 324  When the two men could not be found, 22 Thakur men were lined up at the Yamuna river and shot from behind. Two survived and twenty died. The Behmai massacre led Thakur farmers to pressure Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to impose the rule of law. When she was later arrested in 1983, Phoolan Devi claimed that she had not been present at the time of the shooting.[15][2]: 150–151  This was confirmed by the evidence of the two men who survived, who stated that they had not seen Devi and that a man called Ram Avtar was giving orders.[2]: 159  By other accounts, such as that of journalist Khushwant Singh, it was Devi who put the men to death.[14]: 324  For Dalits, Phoolan Devi was to be celebrated for fighting back against her abuse by men of a higher caste and when she eluded capture by the authorities her fame grew.[20] The killings prompted the resignation of V. P. Singh, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.[21] It was later clarified that the dead men were composed of seventeen Thakurs, one Muslim, one Dalit and one Other Backward Class; Phoolan Devi was charged in absentia with 48 crimes, which included 22 murders, kidnapping and looting.[2]: xiii [22]

Surrender

A black and white head and shoulder illustration of a woman wearing a bandana and frowning at the artist
A drawing of Phoolan Devi at the time of her surrender

After the massacre, Phoolan Devi remained on the run. She was nearly caught by the police on 31 March 1981, and had to shoot her way out.[14]: 335  Her mother was held for five months in Kalpi prison to pressure Devi to give herself up.[8] In 1983, Phoolan Devi surrendered to the authorities after long negotiations led by Rajendra Chaturvedi, a police officer from Bhind. Dressed in a police uniform and still armed with a Mauser rifle, she bowed before representations of Durga and Gandhi, then prostrated herself in front of Arjun Singh, chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, with 8,000 people watching.[9] Phoolan Devi had set conditions regarding her surrender, which included: no death penalty for anyone from her gang; a maximum custodial sentence of eight years; no use of handcuffs; being imprisoned as a group; being imprisoned in Madhya Pradesh and not Uttar Pradesh; her family being given land with their goat and cow; her brother getting a government job.[9] She and seven men, including Man Singh, surrendered.[2]: 215  Mala Sen records that the male journalists gathered in Bhind to watch her surrender were unimpressed with her plain appearance.[2]: 218 

Phoolan Devi was charged with the 48 crimes.[23] The gang was incarcerated at Gwalior. Despite the promise she would not spend more than eight years in prison, Phoolan Devi spent over ten years on remand.[14]: 322  During this time, she had tuberculosis and she was diagnosed with two stomach tumours.[8] Whilst receiving hospital treatment, she received a hysterectomy without her consent.[7] The others, including Man Singh, agreed to trials in Uttar Pradesh and were all acquitted, but Phoolan Devi refused to make a deal and remained convinced she would be murdered if she went there.[9]

Political career

Charges against Phoolan Devi were dropped in 1994 by order of the central government of Mulayam Singh Yadav, from the Samajwadi Party.[24] After her release from prison, she joined the Samajwadi Party and in the 1996 general election, she was elected to the Lok Sabha as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh.[25] She won with a majority of 37,000 and had over 300,000 votes in total. She was not the only illiterate MP, joining others such as Bhagwati Devi and Shobhawati Devi.[8] Phoolan Devi campaigned with limited success for the rights of women and to provide better amenities for the poor.[4]: 251  She told author Roy Moxham "I want to bring hospitals, schools, electricity and clean water to the poor in the villages. To stop child marriage and to improve life for women."[8] Mallah people were happy to have someone of their caste representing them in parliament for the first time and she was generally popular among Other Backward Classes. She visited her constituents in their villages and listened to their concerns.[26][27]

The Kanpur district court set aside Yadav's pronouncement, a decision upheld by the Allahabad High Court.[28] In 1996, Phoolan Devi lost her Supreme Court appeal to have the charges dropped. The following year, the court approved a request from Uttar Pradesh to arraign Devi on charges related to the Behmai massacre. She did not attend the court date in Kanpur, to the outrage of the widows of Behmai; after several months of legal machinations, the Supreme Court ruled that Devi did not need to be jailed before trial.[8] She lost her seat to the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate in the 1998 elections, then regained it the following year. She was holding the position at the time of her death, at the age of 37.[7][8] The criminal charges against her remained open.[28]

Photograph of Indian woman, who is acting in a red and yellow dress
Actress Seema Biswas, who played Devi in the Bandit Queen

Phoolan Devi dictated her autobigraphy I, Phoolan Devi which was published first in French and then in other languages, including English, Japanese and Malay. The income from book sales supported Devi and enabled her to pay her legal fees.[8] She married again to Umed Singh and appeared in a film with him called Sholay Aur Chingari (Blazing Fires and Sparks).[24] Together with her new husband, she became a Buddhist, aiming to evade the Hindu caste system. They attended a ceremony at Deekshabhoomi in 1995.[4]: 251 [29] Moxham reported that she then renounced Buddhism.[8]

The 1994 film Bandit Queen was loosely based on Mala Sen's biography; it was directed by Shekhar Kapur and starred Seema Biswas as Phoolan Devi.[12] After it received acclaim at Cannes Film Festival, Kapur asked for permission from the Central Board of Film Certification to screen the film at cinemas in India. Phoolan Devi attempted to block the release, commenting "It's simply not the story of my life".[2]: 254 [9] She was supported by the feminist and novelist Arundhati Roy, who wrote a critique of the film entitled The Great Indian Rape Trick.[12] In his 2021 autobiography Farrukh Dhondy, the former commissioning editor at Channel 4, described how he rushed to Delhi in order to get Umed Singh to persuade Phoolan Devi to drop her complaint.[30] When Phoolan Devi discovered Singh had taken this payment, they became estranged, before later reconciling.[8] A court case was brought against screening the film by lawyer Indira Singh and Arundhati Roy at the Delhi High Court.[24] Ultimately, Devi received £40,000 from Channel 4 and dropped the complaint.[7]

Assassination

Assassination of Phoolan Devi
LocationNew Delhi
Date25 July 2001
13:30 (UTC+5.5)
Attack type
Murder
DeathsPhoolan Devi
Injured1
Perpetrators3 unidentified gunmen

At 13:30 on 25 July 2001, Phoolan Devi was shot dead by three unknown assailants outside her house at 44 Ashoka Road in New Delhi.[25] She was shot nine times and her bodyguard was hit twice; he returned fire as the attackers escaped by car. She was rushed to Lohia Hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival.[25] All business of both houses of Parliament was adjourned for two days and the funeral took place in Mirzapur.[8]

Days after the murder, Sher Singh Rana was arrested and claimed he had shot at Phoolan Devi, saying the assassination was revenge for the Behmai massacre.[31] Rana was a political activist from Uttaranchal who at first struggled to convince police that he was present at the murder.[32][33] He escaped from Tihar Jail in 2004 and was recaptured two years later.[34] In August 2014, Rana received a life sentence for murder, with ten other co-defendants being acquitted.[35][36] He was subsequently granted bail in October 2016.[37] In 2018, Devi's sister Munni claimed that Rana had been framed by a government conspiracy and that Devi had been murdered on the order of Umed Singh.[38]

Legacy

Phoolan Devi's fame throughout India continued to grow after her death and the controversy surrounding the Bandit Queen film had already ensured that she was globally famous; she has become a legendary figure, alongside other outlaws such as Ned Kelly, Sándor Rózsa and Pancho Villa.[18][39] Her life has inspired biographies by Roy Moxham, Mala Sen, and Richard Shears and Isobelle Gidley, and novels by Irène Frain and Dimitri Friedman.[1][8] A graphic novel entitled Phoolan Devi, Rebel Queen was published in 2020.[40] Scholar Tatiana Szurlej notes that the facts presented in these biographies often contradict each other, despite coming from interviews with Phoolan Devi herself.[1] In 1994, Arundhati Roy commented "she is suffering from a case of Legenditis. She's only a version of herself. There are other versions of her that are jostling for attention."[41] Media theorist Sandra Ponzanesi states Phoolan Devi is an example of a Third World postcolonial subject who is aware of the racist and patronising Orientalist attitudes that First World analysts have of her.[18]

Several films have been made about her life. Ashok Roy made the 1984 film Pholaan Devi in Bengali language and followed it the next year with a Hindi version entitled Kahani Phoolvati Ki.[42]: 23  Bandit Queen came out in 1994 and in 2019 Hossein Martin Fazeli was developing a documentary entitled Phoolan.[2]: 254 [12][43] In 2022, Farrukh Dhondy announced that he was making a web series about her life told from the perspective of Rajendra Chaturvedi, the person who arranged her surrender.[44] Phoolan Devi has been represented in fine art by painters such as Rekha Rodwittiya. Her life has also been commemorated by folk singers, making her into a mythical outlaw figure.[45] Shirish Korde wrote an opera called Phoolan Devi: The Bandit Queen which premiered in 2010 at the Tsai Music Centre at the University of Boston.[46]

The courtcase concerning the Behmai massacre began in 2012; of the twenty three people facing charges, sixteen (including Devi) were dead by 2020. Of the seven remaining suspects, three were on the run (including Man Singh). A verdict was expected in January 2020 and then delayed because important case documents had been lost.[47] The last witness died the following year and since the presiding judge had been transferred, the case began again in 2022.[48][49] In 2023, another suspect died, leaving only two people on trial.[50]

In 2018, the NISHAD Party laid claim to Phoolan Devi's political legacy, saying that it would build a statue of her in Gorakhpur because the Mallah subcaste forms part of the Nishad caste.[10] Three years later, in 2021, in order to mark twenty years since the assassination, the Vikassheel Insaan Party proposed to place statues of her in 18 districts of Uttar Pradesh. In Unnao and Varanasi, the local authorities blocked the installation of the statues.[22] Tributes were paid to her by Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, Chirag Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) and Tejashwi Yadav of Rashtriya Janata Dal.[27][51]

Selected works

  • Devi, Phoolan (1996). Cuny, Marie-Therese; Rambali, Paul (eds.). I, Phoolan Devi: The autobiography of India's bandit queen. London: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-87960-6.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Given names vary between texts, such as: Gorha Ka Purwa and Gorhapurwa; Vikram and Vickram; Putti Lal and Puttilal.[1]
  2. ^ Indian society is divided into four castes. From top to bottom these are: Brahmin (priests), Kshatriya (warriors), Vaishya (traders) and Shudra (labourers).[5]: 194  Underneath these four classes are the Dalits, also known as the untouchables.[6]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Szurlej, Tatiana (31 December 2018). "From Heroic Durga to the Next Victim of an Oppressive Patriarchal Indian Culture: Too Many Variants of Phoolan Devi's Biography". Cracow Indological Studies. 20 (2): 257–280. doi:10.12797/CIS.20.2018.02.12. S2CID 165523279.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Sen, Mala (1991). India's bandit queen: The true story of Phoolan Devi (Revised and updated 1995 ed.). London: Pandora. ISBN 0-04-440888-9.
  3. ^ "Phoolan Devi birth anniversary: An exceptional journey of the Bandit Queen". CNBC TV18. 10 August 2022. Archived from the original on 28 November 2022. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
  4. ^ a b c d John Arquilla (2011). Insurgents, Raiders, and Bandits. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781566638326. Archived from the original on 12 January 2023. Retrieved 3 December 2021.
  5. ^ Peacock, J. Sunita (10 January 2014). "Phoolan Devi: The Primordial Tradition of the Bandit Queen". In Dong, Lan (ed.). Transnationalism and the Asian American Heroine: Essays on Literature, Film, Myth and Media. Jefferson, North Carolina, US: McFarland & Company. pp. 187–195. ISBN 978-0-7864-6208-7.
  6. ^ Rathod, Bharat (2022). "Introduction". Dalit Academic Journeys: Stories of Caste, Exclusion and Assertion in Indian Higher Education (Ebook ed.). New Delhi: Routledge India. pp. 1–31. doi:10.4324/9781003224822-1. ISBN 9781003224822. Archived from the original on 21 December 2022. Retrieved 21 December 2022.
  7. ^ a b c d "Phoolan Devi". The Daily Telegraph. 26 July 2001. Archived from the original on 17 December 2022. Retrieved 17 December 2022.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Moxham, Roy (2010). Outlaw: India's bandit queen and me (Ebook ed.). London: Rider. ISBN 9781846041822.
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Weaver, Mary Anne (1 November 1996). "India's Bandit Queen". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 17 December 2022. Retrieved 20 December 2022.
  10. ^ a b Verma, Amita (14 July 2018). "Fight for Phoolan's political legacy". The Asian Age. Archived from the original on 20 December 2022. Retrieved 20 December 2022.
  11. ^ a b c "Phoolan Devi: Champion of the poor". BBC News. 25 July 2001. Archived from the original on 25 September 2021. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  12. ^ a b c d e Snyder, Michael (13 November 2017). "The Life and Legend of India's Bandit Queen". Roads & Kingdoms. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  13. ^ "Mala Sen". Daily Telegraph. 30 May 2011. Archived from the original on 21 September 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  14. ^ a b c d e Singh, Khushwant (2004). "Phoolan Devi, Queen of Dacoits". In Ashraf, Saad (ed.). Penguin Book of Indian Journeys. India: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-100764-9. Archived from the original on 12 January 2023. Retrieved 21 December 2022.
  15. ^ a b Harding, Luke (26 July 2001). "The queen is dead". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 1 May 2020. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  16. ^ Fernandes, Leela (1999). "Reading "India's Bandit Queen": A Trans/national Feminist Perspective on the Discrepancies of Representation". Signs. 25 (1): 123–152. doi:10.1086/495416. ISSN 0097-9740. JSTOR 3175617. S2CID 143129445. Archived from the original on 21 December 2022. Retrieved 21 December 2022.
  17. ^ Brown, C. Mackenzie; Agrawal, Nupur D. (2014). "The Rape that Woke Up India: Hindu Imagination and the Rape of Jyoti Singh Pandey". Journal of Religion and Violence. 2 (2): 234–280. doi:10.5840/jrv2014222. ISSN 2159-6808. JSTOR 26671430. Archived from the original on 21 December 2022. Retrieved 21 December 2022.
  18. ^ a b c Ponzanesi, Sandra (2017). "The Arena of the Colony: Phoolan Devi and Postcolonial Critique". Doing Gender in Media, Art and Culture. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. pp. 94–105. doi:10.4324/9781315268026-8. hdl:1874/380923. ISBN 9781315268026. S2CID 188027215. Archived from the original on 20 December 2022. Retrieved 21 December 2022.
  19. ^ "Dacoit who 'kidnapped' Phoolan Devi dies at 69". Hindustan Times. 26 July 2022. Archived from the original on 7 October 2022. Retrieved 7 October 2022.
  20. ^ Karon, Tony (25 July 2001). "India's Bandit Queen Died As She Once Lived". Time. Archived from the original on 21 December 2022. Retrieved 20 December 2022.
  21. ^ Naim, Shahira (30 April 2006). "Kshatriya Samaj to honour Phoolan's killer". The Tribune India. Archived from the original on 29 October 2020. Retrieved 21 December 2022.
  22. ^ a b Siddiqui, Faiz Rahman (26 July 2021). "Uttar Pradesh: District administration stalls unveiling of Phoolan Devi's statue in Unnao". The Times of India. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
  23. ^ "Phoolan Devi death anniversary: Lesser-known facts about the 'Bandit Queen'". News9live. 25 July 2022. Archived from the original on 12 August 2022. Retrieved 7 May 2023.
  24. ^ a b c Butalia, Pankaj (29 August 2001). "Phoolan Devi: From travesty to tragedy". Open Democracy. Archived from the original on 20 December 2022. Retrieved 20 December 2022.
  25. ^ a b c "Phoolan Devi shot dead". The Hindu. 26 July 2001. Archived from the original on 31 January 2002. Retrieved 31 October 2018.
  26. ^ Ashraf, Asad (8 March 2022). "22 Years After Phoolan Devi's Murder, Bandit Queen Remains A Divisive Figure In Mirzapur". Outlook India. Archived from the original on 12 April 2023. Retrieved 7 May 2023.
  27. ^ a b "Eye on Nishad votes, Akhilesh meets Phoolan Devi's mother". The Economic Times. 14 October 2021. Archived from the original on 31 January 2022. Retrieved 7 May 2023.
  28. ^ a b Mallick, Sarmeeli (10 October 2022). "Mulayam Singh Yadav's masterstrokes that proved his mettle in Indian politics". Times Now. Archived from the original on 10 October 2022. Retrieved 7 May 2023.
  29. ^ "Phoolan had embraced Buddhism". The Times of India. Pune. 27 July 2001. Archived from the original on 25 July 2021. Retrieved 24 January 2021.
  30. ^ Bhatia, Sidharth (18 October 2021). "The Amusing, the Outrageous and the Pensive: Farrukh Dhondy's Memoir Has It All". The Wire (India). Archived from the original on 20 December 2022. Retrieved 20 December 2022.
  31. ^ "Man arrested for murder of 'Bandit Queen'". Daily Telegraph. 27 July 2001. Archived from the original on 12 December 2019. Retrieved 17 December 2022.
  32. ^ "Profile of Sher Singh Rana". The Times of India. 27 July 2001. Archived from the original on 26 April 2019. Retrieved 9 August 2012.
  33. ^ Harding, Luke (30 July 2001). "Mystery surrounds Bandit Queen murder". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 17 December 2022. Retrieved 17 December 2022.
  34. ^ "Main accused in Phoolan Devi's killing convicted". News Karnataka. IANS. 8 August 2014. Archived from the original on 9 August 2014.
  35. ^ Shakil, Sana (14 August 2014). "Life sentence to Sher Singh Rana for killing Phoolan Devi". The Times of India. Archived from the original on 14 August 2014. Retrieved 14 August 2014.
  36. ^ "Killer of Phoolan Devi, India's 'Bandit Queen', given life sentence". The Guardian. AP. 14 August 2014. Archived from the original on 23 October 2020. Retrieved 17 December 2022.
  37. ^ "Sher Singh Rana Gets Bail In Phoolan Devi Murder Case". NDTV. Archived from the original on 23 August 2019. Retrieved 3 December 2020.
  38. ^ Jaiswal, Anuja (21 May 2018). "Bandit queen's sister claims Sher Singh wrongly convicted for Phoolan's murder". The Times of India. Archived from the original on 13 November 2018. Retrieved 13 November 2018.
  39. ^ Seal, Graham (2009). "The Robin Hood Principle: Folklore, History, and the Social Bandit". Journal of Folklore Research. 46 (1): 67–89. doi:10.2979/JFR.2009.46.1.67. ISSN 0737-7037. JSTOR 40206940. S2CID 144567050. Archived from the original on 20 December 2022. Retrieved 21 December 2022.
  40. ^ "Phoolan Devi, Rebel Queen by Claire Fauvel". Publishers Weekly. 2 December 2020. Archived from the original on 21 December 2022. Retrieved 21 December 2022.
  41. ^ Roy, Arundhati. "The Great Indian Rape Trick I". Sawnet. Archived from the original on 14 April 2016. Retrieved 20 December 2022.
  42. ^ Sen, Meheli; Basu, Anustup (2013). Figurations in Indian Film. Berlin: Springer. ISBN 978-1-137-34978-1. Archived from the original on 12 January 2023. Retrieved 21 December 2022.
  43. ^ Vlessing, Etan (29 April 2019). "Hot Docs: Lisa Ray to Voice Star in Bandit Queen Doc 'Phoolan' (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on 29 September 2022. Retrieved 5 May 2023.
  44. ^ Verma, Smitha (7 May 2022). ""I was at the right place at the right time"". The New Indian Express. Archived from the original on 20 December 2022. Retrieved 20 December 2022.
  45. ^ Brahma, Prakash (2022). "Gestures of Cultural Justice: Narrative Justice for Phoolan Devi in Epic Recounting". Economic and Political Weekly. 57 (9). ISSN 2349-8846.
  46. ^ Schnauber, Tom (25 April 2010). "Dancing Most Convincing Element of Phoolan Devi's Journey to Boston". The Boston Musical Intelligencer. Archived from the original on 27 May 2022. Retrieved 19 December 2022.
  47. ^ "Main witness of Behmai massacre dies, court yet to pronounce verdict in 1981 case". The Economic Times. 15 December 2020. Archived from the original on 11 June 2022. Retrieved 7 May 2023.
  48. ^ "Last witness in Behmai massacre dies waiting for verdict". Telangana Today. 22 October 2021. Archived from the original on 25 May 2022. Retrieved 7 May 2023.
  49. ^ "1981 Behmai case hearing begins again". The Shillong Times. 24 February 2022. Archived from the original on 4 March 2022. Retrieved 7 May 2023.
  50. ^ Naqvi, Haidar (12 April 2023). "Another accused in 1981 Behmai massacre dies, only 2 men now face trial". Hindustan Times. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 7 May 2023.
  51. ^ "Now Tejashwi, Chirag also come out in praise of Phoolan Devi". The Indian Express. 27 July 2021. Archived from the original on 23 May 2022. Retrieved 7 May 2023.

Further reading

  • Shears, Richard; Gidley, Isobelle (1984). Devi: The Bandit Queen. London: Allen & Unwin. ISBN 0-04-920097-6.
  • Frain, Irène (1993). Devi (in French). Paris: France loisirs. ISBN 978-2724273755.
  • Pugazhendhi, N. (1984). Phoolan Devi (in Tamil).
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Phoolan_Devi&oldid=1155561599"