Bandit Queen Phoolan Devi murdered

[Jagat 1]

<h3>The killing of India's Bandit Queen </h3>

 

Derek Brown (The Guardian)

Wednesday July 25, 2001

 

Phoolan Devi, an illiterate country girl who became the most famous woman in India, has been murdered.

 

She died in a hail of bullets fired by three men outside her Delhi home. The assassins abandoned their car and fled the scene in a three-wheeled autorickshaw. Devi's bodyguard was severely wounded.

 

Devi, known to an adoring public as the Bandit Queen - also the title of a 1994 movie about her extraordinary life - was killed instantly. She was 43.

 

News of the murder flashed around India, causing a storm of grief and sensation. Proceedings in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament in Delhi, were halted for 40 minutes after home minister L K Advani broke the news to shocked members.

 

Perhaps the most remarkable phase of Devi's life was the last five years, for she too was a member of parliament - an astonishing achievement for an uneducated, lower-caste woman with a reputation for mass murder.

 

The facts of Devi's career have long been shrouded in mystery, not least by herself. By common consent, she was a fantasist with a chameleon ability to reinvent herself at regular intervals. She was also formidably intelligent.

 

What is generally accepted is that she was born into a dirt-poor family in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, and married off to a widower when she was just 11. She left her husband when she turned 12, and drifted into the violent world of dacoits - armed gangsters.

 

Several times, according to her biographers, she was brutally raped, and at least one of her several paramours was shot dead by rivals as he lay next to her.

 

While still in her teens, Devi formed her own gang, and quickly achieved local notoriety as the "beautiful dacoit". She first burst into the nation's consciousness in 1981, when 22 men of the Thakur caste - often rich landowners - were massacred at Behmai village in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. It was the home village of two brothers who had raped and tortured Devi.

 

After the Behmai murders Devi, then just 22, became for some a detested public enemy number one. For others, she was a heroine; a symbol of the struggle against caste oppression and injustice.

 

After two years dodging the police in the wild ravines of Chambal, she surrendered to police in the neighbouring state of Madhya Pradesh. Her reputation soared to new heights, for it was a lavish and colourful ceremony, witnessed by some 8000 wildly cheering people. Devi had negotiated stiff terms for her surrender, including immunity from prosecution for the Behmai murders - she always denied having ordered the massacre. Nevertheless, she spent the next 11 years in prison.

 

She emerged in 1994 to a blare of publicity, which she handled with the same gutsy aplomb with which she had led her dacoits. She roundly denounced the Bandit Queen movie and for a time it was banned in India.

 

Next, she hurled herself into politics, with the Samajwadi party which champions the lower castes. She was first elected an MP in 1996, lost her seat in 1998, and won it back again in 1999.

 

Nothing is known as yet about the motive for the sensational murder. It could have been politically connected, for Devi was a leading vote winner for the Samajwadi, which threatens to wrest power in coming elections for the state assembly in Uttar Pradesh.

 

It is also possible that the Thakur caste members who lost relatives in the 1981 Behmai killings and who have long campaigned for the Bandit Queen to be brought to justice, have at long last had their revenge.

 

 

[Guest guest]

<h3>Phoolan's murder mystery deepens: Police finds accused in Jail</h3>

 

PTI

Dehradun, August 3

 

In a significant twist to the Phoolan Devi murder case, police have found that Ravinder, an accused in the case who has already been arrested, was in jail when the MP was gunned down in Delhi on July 25 and someone else was involved in the commission of

the crime.

 

 

 

Prime accused Sher Singh Rana alias Pankaj, who has confessed to having killed Phoolan Devi, had during interrogation named Ravinder alias Rajinder as one of his accomplices and claimed that he had fired shots at the MP's security guard.

 

 

 

However, police here have found that Ravinder was lodged in a Haridwar jail in an excise case from July 3 to July 26 and thus could not have participated in the crime, top police

officials said here Friday.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, it has almost been established that Rana was not lodged in the Roshanabad jail when the killing took place as claimed earlier and someone else was impersonating him, they said.

 

 

 

Investigations also revealed that Rana and Ravinder were in constant touch with each other when the conspiracy to kill Phoolan Devi was hatched, they said. However, police have so far failed to ascertain the motive behind the murder but are now probing

the case from a political conspiracy angle.

 

 

 

There are indications suggesting that both Rana and Ravinder were hand in glove in the Phoolan Devi murder case, Haridwar Superintendent of Police Hari Shankar Shukla told

 

 

General of Uttaranchal Police Ashok Kant Sharan termed the Phoolan Devi murder case as "deep-rooted conspiracy of a very fertile mind".

 

 

 

He denied media reports that the Uttaranchal Police had any information regarding the involvement of two Samajwadi Party MPs in the case.

 

 

 

Shukla said the police had questioned Praveen Mittal, an advocate, Amit Rathi, who allegedly provided arms to Sher Singh and one Kannu Batra, whose mobile phone was used by

Sher Singh.