Phoolan Devi was an Indian gangster who later became a politician. She was popularly known as the “Bandit Queen”.
Wiki/Biography
Phoolan Devi was born on August 10, 1963 (he died at the age of 38) in Ghura Ka Purwa (also known as Gorha ka Purwa), a small village in Jharaun district of Uttar Pradesh. Her zodiac sign is Sagittarius. Phoolan Devi’s family was very poor and their only asset was a farmland of about one acre with a neem tree on it. When he was 11 years old, his grandfather died and his father’s brother became the head of the family. They proposed cutting down the neem trees and using the land to grow other profitable crops. She felt that her uncle dominated her father simply because he did not have a son. She began taunting her cousins, using abusive language towards them and even attacking one of his cousins. She then led a group of village girls to sit on the ground in a sit-in protest, and when her family came to take her home, she did not even move; for this, she was brutally beaten by her family members and fell into a coma.
family, caste and husband
She was born into the Mallah (boatman caste) community, the fourth child of Devi Din Mallah and his wife Moola. Of all her siblings, only Pran, her sister Rukmini Devi Nishad, her sister Munni Devi and her brother survived.
Phoolan’s sister Rukmini Devi and her mother Moola Devi
When she was 11 years old, she married Puttilal Mallah, who was almost three times her age. She lived with a gangster named Vikram Mallah, who was the second in command of the gang, and Pooran later became a Dacoit. After Vikram Malla died in a fight with the gang, the Rajput members of the gang took her away and tortured her in Bemmai village. She later developed a relationship with Man Singh, who helped her escape from the house in Behmai village where she was imprisoned and later became her partner in the Behmai massacre.
Phoolan Devi and her lover Man Singh
She later married politician Umedh Singh.
Phoolan Devi and husband Ummed Singh
gangster life
In 1979, after her husband abandoned her, Pulan fell into the hands of bandits. However, it’s unclear how it happens. Phoolan wrote in her biography: “Kismet Ko Yehi Manzoor Tha (It was fate’s decision)”. She soon regretted it after gang leader Babu Gujjar sexually abused and tortured her. She was saved by Vikram Mallah, who killed Babu Gujjar during an argument related to her rape. Puran and Vikram later lived together. Both even knew about each other’s previous marriages.
Phoolan Devi’s Bandit Era
Meanwhile, two upper-caste Rajput brothers, Shri Ram and Lala Ram, who were outraged by the news of Babu Gujjar’s death, were released. They attacked a village and started harassing the Marla people of the village. The Mallas in the gang decided to divide the gang into Rajputs and Mallas. Both communities were unhappy with the decision and a heated argument between Shri Ram and Vikram Mallah led to a shootout. Vikram Mallah was shot dead and Phoolan was taken captive by Shri Ram and Lalla Ram to their home in Behmai village; there she He was beaten, raped and humiliated by the Rajputs for three weeks. In a final humiliation, she was paraded naked through the streets of the village. She was able to escape with the help of a lower-caste villager from Bemmai and two Mallas from Vikram’s gang, including Man Singh.
Beimai Massacre: A Story of Revenge
Phoolan Devi and her gang
Together with Man Singh, she led an entirely Maratha gang that launched violent attacks and robberies in Bundelkhand state; mostly targeting upper caste communities. Some say she once robbed upper-caste people and shared the loot with lower-caste people in a “Robin Hood-style” manner, although Indian authorities claim this is a myth. Poulin and her gang return to Bemay to seek revenge, dressed as police officers. On the night of February 14, 1981, she lined up the upper-caste men in the village and shot them dead. The shootout left 20 people dead.
Commemorating the victims of the Behemai massacre
The massacre sparked national outrage. After multiple bounties were placed on her head, police searches were unsuccessful. Two years after the Bemmai massacre, Poulan agreed to surrender under certain conditions. When she surrendered, she faced charges of 48 crimes, including fraud, kidnapping and mass murder. Her trial was postponed for 11 years, during which time she remained in Gwalior Central Jail as an awaiting trial.
politician life
After her release in 1994, she was invited by Dr. Ramadoss (founder of Pattali Makkal Katchi) to attend a conference on prohibition and female pornography. This meeting paved the way for her entry into Indian politics. She contested the 11th Lok Sabha elections from Mirzapur constituency in Uttar Pradesh as a member of the Samajwadi Party. Mulayam Singh Yadav reportedly made her active in politics. She won the election and served as a member of Congress from 1996 to 1998. She lost her seat in the 1998 Lok Sabha elections, but was re-elected in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections and served as a member of Parliament until her assassination in 2001.
dispute
- The Uttar Pradesh government, led by Mulayam Singh Yadav, shocked the country by withdrawing all cases against her; the matter became a topic of public discussion.
- Shekhar Kapoor made the film Bandit Queen (1983) based on her life. Seema Biswas commented on Phoolan Devi’s character in the film. However, before the film was released, Puran Devi was not satisfied with the content and accuracy of the film and fought fiercely for its ban. She even threatened to burn herself alive outside the theater if the film was not banned.
- There was another controversy surrounding the film when the producers of Channel 4 Films had to give her 40,000 pounds (approximately Rs 36.40 lakh) to withdraw her objections to the film.
- Phoolan Devi sparked controversy after she visited the crematorium. Her family wanted her to be cremated in New Delhi, while her party members wanted her body cremated in Mirzapur, her erstwhile political constituency. She was eventually cremated at Chaubey Ghat in Mirzapur.
favorite thing
- Song: Dil Hoom Hoom Kare
fact
- After Pulan entered politics, she used her spare time to study.
- Once, she said in an interview that she did not want to be a woman in her next life.
- When she returned home after escaping her husband’s home; to teach Pran a lesson for the shame she had brought upon her family, her cousins accused her of stealing their belongings and sent her to jail. There, she was physically abused. They asked her to leave and warned her to behave in front of her family in the future.
- In 1969, a few months after the Gauna ceremony (the ceremony in which a married woman begins living with her husband), her husband abandoned her. She was considered a social outcast; as it has always been a taboo in Indian society for a woman to leave her husband or a husband to leave his wife.
- She wrote her autobiography titled “I, Phoolan Devi” with the help of international writers Marie-Therese Cuny and Paul Rambali.
- In her autobiography, she described her husband as having a “very bad character.”
- She learned to use a rifle with the help of Vikram Malla.
- According to legend, Vikram Mallah taught her,
If you are going to kill, kill twenty people, not just one. For if you kill twenty people, your fame will spread; if you kill just one, they will hang you as a murderer. “
- Pulan is the only woman in the bandit gang. After every crime she committed, she would go to the Durga temple and thank the goddess for her protection.
- After the hunt for Poulan failed, she was glorified by various media outlets and dubbed the “Bandit Queen.”
- The Bemmai massacre became one of the main reasons why Vice President Manmohan Singh resigned as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.
- It was at this time that she was recognized as a Devi by several media outlets and hence became known as “Phoolan Devi”.
- Indira Gandhi’s government negotiated the surrender with Puran through Rajendra Chaturvedi, the then SP in Bind.
- She agreed to surrender on the condition that she surrendered only to the Madhya Pradesh police and not to the Uttar Pradesh police. There were several conditions, including not imposing the death penalty on her gang members, serving no more than eight years in prison for other gang members, giving her a plot of land and a police escort for her family to witness her surrender.
- In addition, she also had a condition, that is, she could only put down her hands in front of the portraits of Mahatma Gandhi and Goddess Durga; she would not hand them over to the police.
- She never faced any trial for the massacre as Phoolan and 10 of her gang members surrendered to the Madhya Pradesh government in February 1983 under an amnesty scheme.
- She was first paroled in 1994 through the mediation of Vishambhar Prasad Nishad, leader of the Nishadha community (another name for the Mala community of boatmen and fishermen).
- While serving her sentence in prison, Puran Devi underwent surgery for an ovarian cyst and a hysterectomy.
- Doctors reportedly joked about the surgery that they didn’t want to breed any more Pullan Divis.
- Behemai still has only Thakur people, except for two families, one a Brahmin and the other a Dalit.
A house in the village of Beimai
- On February 15, 1995, Phoolan Devi and her husband Ummed Singh converted to Buddhism at Deekshabhoomi, a famous Buddhist holy place.
- Pooran was shot nine times in the head, chest, shoulder and right arm outside his bungalow in Delhi. The three gunmen fled the scene in a Maruti 800 car and later abandoned the car midway and boarded an auto-rickshaw.
After Puran Devi was shot dead
- Police found a Webley & Scott pistol and an improvised firearm, an IOF .32 revolver, nine blank rounds and 15 live rounds at the scene. But before any forensic testing could be conducted on them, the revolver disappeared.
- Pooran’s sister Mouni Devi later accused Pooran’s husband Umed Singh of involvement in her murder.
- Sher Singh Rana, the main accused in the case, walked into the police station and confessed to his crime. He said he was motivated to seek revenge against her for killing an upper-caste man when she was the leader of a gang of robbers.
Sher Singh Rana
- Sher Singh Rana escaped from prison and fled to Kandahar, Afghanistan, where he was captured in Calcutta two years later. He even filed papers for the 2012 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, but he failed. The Delhi High Court granted him bail in 2016.
- Sher Singh Rana got help from another Uttar Pradesh criminal, Subhash Thakur, who gave him Rs. 15,000 rupees 20,000 per month as personal expenses.
- Sher Singh Rana has written an autobiography titled Jail Diary: Tihar Se Kabul-Kandahar Tak.
- Shekhar Kapoor in the film Bandit Queen (1983) About her life. The film brought Pran Devi international recognition.
- In her review of the film “The Great Indian Rape Technique,” writer and activist Arundhati Roy questioned the right to “reenact the rape of a living woman without her permission,” Accusing Shekhar Kapoor of taking advantage of Pran Devi and misinterpreting her life story and her story. significance.
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education