The Bandit Queen: Phoolan Devi

On January 30, 1981,  in Behmai, District of Kanpur Dehat, Uttar Pradesh, India, she murdered (by shooting) 20 + men (upper-caste villagers). To avenge her gang rape. She was arrested in February 1983,  and she spent 11 years in Gwalior Central Jail in Madhya Pradesh and was released without any trial in 1994. On 25 July 2001, Phoolan Devi was shot dead by three masked gunmen outside of her Delhi bungalow.

Phoolan Devi (Phulan Devi, Hindi: फूलन देवी) (10 August 1963 – 25 July 2001), popularly known as the "Bandit Queen", was an Indian dacoit (bandit) and later a politician. After being gang-raped by some members of her village, Phoolan Devi turned bandit, and authorized the killing of 22 upper-caste villagers in 1981. Following this, she became notorious across India as a bandit. Some people believe that most of her crimes were committed seeking justice for women's suffering, particularly those in the unfortunate lowest castes; however, the Indian authorities consider this a myth. She was once falsely imprisoned for seeking those involved in her rape to be tried for their crimes. Then made a martyr for exacting this revenge independently from authority and as part of a gang. Later, she surrendered and successfully contested election as a member of the Samajwadi Party. The 1994 film Bandit Queen was loosely based on her life.

Her early life:

Phoolan was born into the mullah (boatmen) caste, in the small village of Ghura Ka Purwa (also spelled Gorha ka Purwa) in Jalaun District, Uttar Pradesh. She was the fourth child of Devi Din and Moola. Phoolan's father owned an acre (0.4 hectare) of land with a huge Neem tree on it. He hoped that the valuable timber of the tree would enable him to pay the dowry for his daughters' marriages. When Phoolan was eleven years old, her grandparents passed away within a short time and her uncle declared himself the head of the family. He took over the inheritance by deceit, leaving Phoolan's family to remain in poverty. Her Uncle had a son, Mayadin. He cut down the Neem tree and sold the wood, intending to keep the proceeds for himself. Although her father submitted with mild protest, Phoolan confronted her cousin. She taunted him, publicly called him a thief and attacked him. With her elder sister, she staged a sit-in on his land. Even after violence against Phoolan — knocking her out with a brick — she wouldn't relent. In an effort to rid himself of Phoolan, Mayadin arranged to have her married to a man named Putti Lal, who lived several hundred miles away. Putti Lal was in his thirties; Phoolan was eleven. Devi claimed in her autobiography that he was a man of "very bad character. " Phoolan's husband raped and mistreated her, which was agonizing for her to endure, particularly due to her age and isolation. She ran away several times, and would be returned to her husband for severe punishment. She was returned to her village, being deemed too young to fulfill her duties as a wife. Three years later in 1977, she was returned back to Putti Lal's home. She protested, and was returned back to her father's home. A wife leaving her husband was a serious taboo in the rural areas, and Phoolan was marked as a social outcast. Phoolan continued to challenge her cousin Mayadin, accusing him of thievery. She took him to court for unlawfully holding her father's land, but lost the case. In 1979, Mayadin accused Phoolan of stealing small items from his house, and arranged for her arrest by the police. During the three days in jail, she was beaten and raped by the authorities. She blamed her cousin for the injustice, and developed hatred for men who routinely denigrated women. When released from prison, she was further shunned by her village and her family. Justice was elusive and she felt hurt by her helplessness.

As a dacoit:

In 1979, a gang of dacoits abducted Phoolan; some also say that she was not kidnapped but "walked away from her life". The gang leader, Babu Gujjar, who was a Gujjar, wanted to rape her. However, she was protected by Vikram Mallah, the second-in-command of the gang who belonged to Phoolan's caste. One night when Babu attempted to rape Phoolan, Vikram killed him and assumed the gang leadership. Phoolan fell in love with this man who had undoubtedly protected her, and became Vikram's second wife. The gang ransacked the village where Phoolan's husband lived. Phoolan stabbed her estranged husband, and dragged him in front of the villagers. The gang left him lying almost dead by the road, with a note as a warning for older men who marry young girls. Phoolan Devi learned how to use a rifle from Vikram, and participated in the gang's activities across Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. The activities consisted of ransacking high-caste villages, kidnapping upper-caste landowners for ransom and train robberies. After every crime, Phoolan Devi would visit a Durga temple and thank the goddess for her protection. The gang hid out in the ravines of Chambal in Dholpur.

The behmai incidents:

Sometime later, Shri Ram and Lala Ram, two upper-caste dacoit brothers belonging to the Thakur caste, returned to the gang. They were outraged by the killing of the gang leader by a low caste gang member. Shri Ram would make sexual advances towards Phoolan. This led to tensions between Shri Ram and Vikram, who made him apologize to Phoolan. When the gang would ransack a village, Shri Ram would beat and insult the Mullahs. This displeased the Mullahs in the gang, many of whom left the gang. When Shri Ram got a dozen Thakurs to join the gang, Vikram suggested the gang be divided into two, but Shri Ram refused. Shortly afterwards, Shri Ram and other Thakur members in the gang attempted to kill Phoolan and Vikram, who managed to escape. However, later they successfully killed Vikram, abducted Phoolan and locked her up in the Behmai village. Phoolan Devi was beaten and raped by several men in Behmai. After three weeks, she managed to escape with two other Mullahs from Vikram's gang, helped by a low-caste villager. She gathered a gang of Mullahs, that she led with Man Singh, a member of Vikram's former gang. The gang carried out a series of violent robberies in north and central India, mainly targeting upper-caste people. Some say that Phoolan Devi targeted only the upper-caste people and shared the loot with the lower-caste people, but the Indian authorities insist this is a myth. Seventeen months after her escape from Behmai, Phoolan returned to the village, to take her revenge. On 14 February 1981, Phoolan and her gang marched into the Behmai village, dressed as police officers. The Thakurs in the village were preparing for a wedding. Phoolan's gang demanded that her kidnappers be produced, along with all the valuables in the village. Details of what exactly happened are not available, but Phoolan is said to have recognized two men who earlier had sexually assaulted her and murdered her lover. When Phoolan's gang failed to find all the kidnappers after an exhaustive search, she ordered her gang members to line up all the upper-caste Thakur men in the village and shoot them. The dacoits opened fire and killed twenty-two Thakur men, most of whom were not involved in her kidnapping or rape. Later, Phoolan Devi claimed that she herself didn't kill anybody in Behmai – all the killings were carried out by her gang members.

The Behmai massacre was followed by a massive police manhunt that failed to locate Phoolan Devi. V. P. Singh, the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, resigned in the wake of the Behmai killings. Phoolan Devi began to be called the Bandit Queen. Dolls of Phoolan Devi dressed as Hindu goddess Durga were sold in market towns in Uttar Pradesh. She was glorified by much of the Indian media.

Her surrender and the jail term:

Two years after the Behmai massacre the police had still not captured Phoolan Devi. The Indira Gandhi Government decided to negotiate a surrender. By this time, Phoolan Devi was in poor health and most of her gang members were dead. 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 Mahatma Gandhi's picture and the Hindu goddess Durga, not to the police. She put before four conditions:

·         Affirmation of an aversion of death penalty

·         The term for the other members should not exceed eight years.

·         A plot of land for her reconciliation.

·         Her entire family should be escorted by the police to her surrender ceremony

An unarmed police chief met her at a hiding place in the Chambal ravines. They walked their way to Bhind, where she laid her rifle before the portraits of Gandhi and Goddess Durga. The onlookers included a crowd of around 10,000 people and 300 police and the then chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, Arjun Singh. 300 police personnel were waiting to arrest her and other members of her gang who surrendered at the same time. Phoolan Devi was charged with 48 crimes, including 30 charges of dacoits (banditry) and kidnapping. Her trial was delayed for 11 years, which she served in the prison. During this period, she was operated on for ovarian cysts and was given an unnecessary hysterectomy. The doctor of the hospital reportedly said later that "We don't want Phoolan Devi breeding more Phoolan Devis". She was finally released on parole in 1994 after persuasion by Vishambhar Prasad Nishad, the leader of the Nishadha fishermen community. The Government of Uttar Pradesh, led by Mulayam Singh Yadav, withdrew all the cases against her.

The election:

In 1996, she stood for election to the 11th Lok Sabha, representing the Samajwadi Party, on a platform of helping the poor and oppressed. She was successfully elected in the constituency of Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh. She lost her seat in the 1998 election but was reelected in the 1999 election and was a sitting member of parliament when she was assassinated.

The movie and her autobiography:

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. Although she was illiterate, Phoolan composed her autobiography entitled The Bandit Queen of India: An Indian Woman's Amazing Journey From Peasant to International Legend, with the help of international authors Marie-Therese Cuny and Paul Rambali.

Her death:

On 25 July 2001, Phoolan Devi was shot dead by three masked gunmen outside of her Delhi bungalow. She was hit five times: three shots to her head and two to her body. The gunmen fled the scene in a Maruti car. She was taken to a nearby hospital but was declared dead. The prime person accused of the murder, Sher Singh Rana alias Pankaj, later surrendered himself to the police. Rana allegedly claimed to have murdered Phoolan Devi to take revenge for the 21 upper-caste men she gunned down in the Behmai massacre. In the immediate aftermath of the murder, the police were accused of incompetence in their handling of the case. It was alleged that a party worker picked up revolvers that had been dumped by the killers and hid them. Three other people staying in her house were accused of knowing about the revolvers. The revolvers then disappeared before the police could conduct a forensic test on them.

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According to Newspapers:

Phoolan Devi shot to dead

(reported in Hindu.com, July 26, 2001)

NEW DELHI, JULY 25. The Samajwadi Party Member of Parliament and former ''bandit queen'', Ms. Phoolan Devi, was shot dead by three car-borne assailants outside her 44 Ashoka Road residence, a stone's throw from Parliament House, here this afternoon. It all happened in a flash around 1-30 p.m. when the 44-year-old MP from Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh had just returned after attending the morning session of Parliament. She was walking towards the main gate when three masked men carrying two revolvers and a Webley Scott pistol pumped nine bullets into her, killing her on the spot. Ms. Phoolan Devi, who shot to prominence after the infamous Behmai massacre of 1981 in which 20 Thakur men were gunned down, sustained at least nine bullet wounds on the head, chest, shoulder and right arm. Her personal security guard, Balinder Singh, was hit in the right chest and right arm. Ms. Phoolan Devi collapsed near the gate.

Though grievously injured, Balinder Singh - who was not carrying his carbine - returned the fire from his 9-mm service pistol. Following the shooting, the three assailants fled in a green Maruti 800 (CIM 907), kept revving nearby an accomplice. They abandoned the car barely 500 meters away on Pandit Pant Marg before boarding a waiting three-wheeler auto-rickshaw (DL-1R-235). Later, police recovered two revolvers, one Webley Scot pistol and a country-made weapon of .32-bore along with nine empty and 15 live rounds from the abandoned car. Ms. Phoolan Devi, whose exploits were immortalized during her lifetime in the much talked about film ''Bandit Queen'' by the noted director Mr. Shekhar Kapur, was rushed to Lohia Hospital by people at her residence, who included her sister-in-law, Ms. Uma Kashyap. At the hospital, the doctors declared the MP ''brought dead''. Her bodyguard was admitted to the hospital in a serious condition.

Soon after the shoot-out there was a big rush of politicians to MS Phoolan Devi's residence as also Lohia Hospital. Her husband, Mr. Umed Singh, was among her various relatives and friends who rushed to the hospital. The body was kept in the hospital mortuary for ``cooling'' over four hours, during which time several political leaders paid their respects to the dynamic political leader who was twice elected to Parliament. From the mortuary, the body was shifted to Lady Hardinge Medical College later in the evening for post- mortem. (According to a UNI report, the body of the slain MP will be cremated tomorrow at Chaube Ghat on the banks of the Ganga in Mirzapur, her constituency. Meanwhile, in Lucknow, the SP has called for a State-wide bandh tomorrow in protest against the killing even as irate party workers staged a dharna before Raj Bhavan.)

A security lapse?

Coming as it did while Parliament was in session, the daring attack - in a high-security zone near the Election Commission - was described by many as a major security lapse, especially since Ms. Phoolan Devi's security had been scaled down despite her insistence that she was under threat. Ms. Phoolan Devi, who surrendered to the authorities in 1983 after a decade-long reign as ''Bandit Queen'' in the Chambal ravines, spent 11 years in Gwalior Central Jail in Madhya Pradesh. She was released without any trial in 1994 after which she joined the Samajwadi Party and was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1996. The Joint Commissioner of Police (New Delhi Range), Mr. Suresh Roy, said a ''red alert'' was immediately sounded and a hunt launched for the culprits. Experts from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory had been summoned to help in the investigation.

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Story of THE BANDIT QUEEN'S METTLE: India's Famed Outlaw

(Written by Molly Moore, of the Washington Post Foreign Service NEW DELHI)

Phoolan Devi was born dirt poor, low caste and female. She grew up hard and fast in rural north India: married at age 11, abandoned by her husband, jailed, raped, kidnapped by bandits. By the time she was 20, Devi turned outlaw. And in the inhospitable desert ravines of her native land, Phoolan Devi became a legend. She was feared and revered as the "Bandit Queen," leader of a gang of dacoits -- robbers -- that plundered and murdered, often stealing from the rich higher castes and sharing the spoils with the poor lower castes. She made international headlines when she was implicated in the largest gang massacre in modern Indian history, reputedly an act of vengeance for the murder of her bandit lover and for her own gang rape by upper-caste landowners. Her story is the stuff of movies: Modern-day Indian Robin Hood and Bonnie Parker, with a touch of Gloria Steinem, all rolled into one. But "Bandit Queen," the movie -- India's nominee for next year's Best Foreign Film Oscar -- has become one of the most controversial motion pictures ever to come out of Bombay's "Bollywood" studios.

The conservative Indian film censor board has barred release of the movie because of its violent rape scenes, nudity and depiction of sensitive political issues. Devi, who cannot read or write and was only recently freed after serving 11 years in prison, has filed a court suit to keep the film out of Indian cinemas, charging that it is an unauthorized invasion of her privacy. "They are raping me all over again and selling me on the screen," says the 32-year-old woman whose life has become a frenetic media whirl since her release from prison in February. "They are selling my honor." The debate over "Bandit Queen" has dominated Indian newspaper headlines and titillated a public that has been forbidden to see the movie even as it has been shown at the Cannes, London and Toronto film festivals. Some news organizations, including The Washington Post, have been allowed to view the Hindi movie at select screenings. But the rancor over "Bandit Queen" goes far deeper than the usual censor board debate over sex and violence. The movie offers a brutal view of the way women are treated in poor rural Indian society. It is a story of social inequities and injustice, of discrimination and desperation. It rips open some of the ugliest wounds of Indian society, wounds that middle-class Indians would prefer remain closed and forgotten.

"Her personal story, extraordinary as it is, reflects many aspects of life as experienced by thousands of women in rural India who continue to strive against a feudal order that persists in a `modern' society, a society in which peasantry collides with capitalist markets and technology," Devi's biographer, Mala Sen, writes in her introduction to "India's Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi," from which the movie was adapted. Of the movie, Sen told reporters during the London Film Festival: "The violence and brutality depicted in the film is happening in India every day. . . . It's about time that we opened our eyes and looked at this reality." Seema Biswas, the 29-year-old actress who plays Devi in the movie, said she found the role so traumatic and draining that she suffered a near breakdown by the time the filming was complete.

The movie, like the reality that Sen and the film's producers say it depicts, is disturbing to watch. The real Bandit Queen's story is no less disturbing to hear.

Lost Girlhood:

"I was married when I was 11," Devi begins, swathed in a white cotton shawl that swallows her now-frail 4-foot 10-inch frame. "If I hadn't gotten married at that young age, my life would not have been ruined." Devi has agreed to speak with a reporter at her rented New Delhi apartment, where she is attempting to begin a new life with a new husband. She shifts uncomfortably beneath the shawl. In her native Hindi dialect, she says softly, "Even now I fight with my mother about it." She tries to rationalize her parents' decision to marry her off to a man three times her own age -- in much the same way that modern India wrestles with the child bride phenomenon, which remains prevalent in rural villages despite laws intended to curb the practice. One of six children born to a poor north Indian farmer who scratched out a living by working other people's rocky, arid land, Devi said her parents struggled just to feed their offspring. When a relative found a prospective groom for young Phoolan, whose name in Hindi means "flower goddess," her parents agreed to the match. The man gave Phoolan's family a cow, as was customary in marital arrangements, and took the frightened child bride home with him.

Her mother, asked by reporters several years later why she had married off her daughter at that age, replied, "Poverty is a terrible thing. We are forced to do many things because of it. How can I explain?" "My parents had the best intentions for me," Devi now says. "They thought, `He's got money. My daughter will be married. She'll be happy.' " Her large brown eyes harden. "No one knew that he was not a man, he was a monster." Devi said that her husband took a second wife and that the two often beat her, treating her as little more than a slave. She ran away and returned to her parents' home. But they sent her back. Terrified of sex, she wailed each time her husband forced himself on her. Finally he abandoned her on a riverbank. Her parents, dishonored that their daughter had been kicked out of the house by her husband, farmed her out to relatives. As a divorced, low-caste woman in a rural village, Devi encountered the wrath of conservative Indian society, which is ruled by a strict code of social separation. Her family was from a community called the Mullahs, low-caste fishermen and boatmen. Most of the Mullahs were landless peasants who worked the soil of the Thakurs, a higher caste of feudal landowners and businessmen. During Devi's youth in the 1970s, as in rural India today, the Mullahs often were repressed and abused by the Thakurs. Devi, who was more outspoken than most of her fellow Mullahs, was the target of constant torment and harassment by upper-caste men in the village. Eventually she was jailed on charges that she'd stolen articles from the home of a cousin with whom her family had been feuding for years. After 20 days in the village jail, she was bailed out by the Thakurs who owned the property her father farmed. In payment, the men demanded sex from her, according to her biographer.

How Phoolan Devi ended up in the hands of outlaw bandits is murky. She has said she was kidnapped and physically abused by the gang leader. As to why she eventually gave in to the gang and its ruthless leaders, even when she had the chance to escape, Devi told her biographer, "A piece of property has no choice." One fact is certain: In the early 1980s, in the rocky ravines of the rugged Chambral Valley in the state of Uttar Pradesh, the legend of the Bandit Queen was born.

A Bandit's Journey:

For Americans, bandits robbing, killing and rampaging through villages constitute an image from another century. In rural northern India, that image remains a fixture of life. But the gangs never flourished more than in the early 1980s. They ruled with abandon -- particularly the lower-caste bandits -- outwitting and outnumbering plodding local police forces, terrorizing the rich and offering a reverse form of protection for the poor, who were often abused by corrupt, higher-caste police. In return, many of the bandit leaders were idolized by the poor, who considered their banditry just another profession in a land where the poor had to fight for every rupee. At the height of her fame, Devi was glorified by the nation's newspapers, which wrote tirelessly of her exploits. The Phoolan Devi Doll, clad in her signature police uniform with a bandoleer of bullets strapped across her chest, was one of the hottest-selling toys in India. Devi, because of her own background, injected a signature twist into her banditry. She became a protector of young village girls who, like her, were sold into early marriages by destitute families. "I'd send my men out during the wedding season," Devi says, smiling at the recollection. "Any time they found a young girl who was to be married, they'd let the wedding procession show up at her doorstep, then chase them away."

But just as the villages were divided by caste, so were even some of the bandit gangs. And thus, one day two upper-caste outlaws shot and killed the lower-caste bandit who was Devi's lover. To demonstrate their power over the gang and its leader's mistress, the killers took Devi hostage. In one of the most painful episodes of her life -- and one of the most brutal scenes in the movie -- Devi was taken to the village of Behmai and gang-raped by a group of upper-caste men. "This is what we do to low-caste goddesses," one of the rapists hisses in the movie. And in the scene that most scandalized the Indian film censor board, Devi is stripped and forced to walk naked through the village, fetching the men water from a well as the entire village looks on. The moviemakers defend the scene, saying it is a common method of punishing women in Indian villages. In fact, in recent months, an increasing number of such incidents have been reported. Devi, in an interview, did not deny the events occurred but said it was an invasion of her privacy to put them on display in movie theaters. "The most private and sensitive things in a woman's life have been portrayed in this film," she said.

"The film shows her being raped by her husband, by the police at the police station, being mass-raped by the Thakurs again and again," says Devi's lawyer, Praveen Anand. "She never wanted to talk about it, even in the book. It is extremely embarrassing for her to talk about this. Little did she want it to be filmed." In real life and in the movie, Devi sought her revenge. On Feb. 14, 1981, her gang stormed an isolated village intending to rob wealthy Thakurs who were preparing for an elaborate wedding. Arriving at the village, Devi recognized it as Behmai, the home of the two men who'd murdered her lover and the site of her humiliation. According to Sen's biography and newspaper accounts at the time, Devi ordered her men to sweep the town in search of the murderers. In all, two dozen upper-caste Thakurs were dragged from their homes and lined up on a riverbank. The bandits opened fire and left 20 men dead -- the largest massacre by a dacoit gang in modern Indian history. Police launched the biggest manhunt ever conducted in the state of Uttar Pradesh, putting 2,000 officers and a helicopter on the trail of Phoolan Devi. In true-life adventures worthy of the Keystone Kops, Devi repeatedly outsmarted the police, once disguising herself in three different costumes in a village swarming with police.

While the national press and the poor villagers of the region delighted in the escapades of the Bandit Queen, she was no laughing matter for state and national politicians who were being depicted as fools by the media. The political pressure became so intense that V.P. Singh -- who would later become prime minister of India -- was forced to resign as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Finally, Phoolan Devi became such a political embarrassment that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi told law enforcement officials that if they couldn't catch Devi, they should cut a deal with her -- on her terms -- for her surrender. In February 1983, with most of her gang members dead and her own health failing as a result of her harsh life on the run, Devi agreed to surrender on the conditions that she not be hanged, that her men serve no more than eight years in prison, that her brother be given a government job, that her father be given a plot of land and that her entire family, along with the family cow and goat, be escorted by police to her surrender ceremony in the neighboring state. Her surrender was an extraordinary spectacle. She marched onto a stage before thousands of cheering peasant supporters, bent down and touched the feet of the chief minister and turned over 25 bullets and her gun. The dramatic surrender made front-page headlines from New Delhi to Washington.

Prisoner of Attention:

"I brooded a lot," Devi says of her 11 long years in prison. She was charged with 48 crimes, including allegations that she shot some of the 20 men killed in the Behmai massacre. But for 11 years her trials were delayed by changes in government and feuds between two neighboring states over where the cases should be tried. Finally, Early this year, when a lower-caste political party won election in Uttar Pradesh, the new chief minister ordered Devi released on bail, saying she had suffered enough. "In jail, my only dream was to get out," said Devi. "I thought life would be easy once I was free. I didn't know I would have to continue my fights. The hardest battle is now -- with the urban, educated, city-bred dacoits." Devi has been besieged by the Indian and international media since her release. She was so intimidated by the mob of reporters and photographers waiting outside Tihar Jail in New Delhi that she retreated to her cell and had to be coaxed out by the prison director. Within weeks, the controversy over the movie created a renewed media feeding frenzy. The Indian press has reported her every move. Devi says that the first time she ventured to her neighborhood vegetable market she was surrounded by so many curious onlookers that she ran back to her apartment in terror. She has received death threats from people opposed to her release from prison, and the government has assigned bodyguards to her. As for her legal situation, the movie couldn't have come at a more delicate time. There are still 48 criminal charges, including murder, pending against her. One of Devi's greatest fears is that scenes from the movie could be used against her if the cases are brought to trial. The movie "shows her there at Behmai," says attorney Anand. "This will have an effect on judgment, on the witnesses and the media, and may incriminate her."

Devi has denied that she killed any of the men:

Even though she is now at war with her biographer, Sen, and received $13,000 for the rights to her story for a movie she now doesn't want released, Devi already has begun cooperating with a French author for a new biography. But mostly, Devi says she just wants to move on with her life. She married a New Delhi business contractor just five months after she left prison. Now she says she would like to start a national social organization to help poor women, child brides and women newly released from prison. The transition from ex-bandit and ex-prisoner to urban New Delhi wife has been far from easy. She is illiterate and finds city life alien. A friend had to teach her how to use a telephone when she moved into her apartment. She suffers from a range of health problems exacerbated by years of living on the run and in prison. She has an explosive temper, which she unleashes on everyone from journalists to family members. Even the Hindu goddess Durga, to whom she has built a small shrine in the corner of her living room, does not escape her wrath: "I even yell and curse the god when I get angry," she says. But in moments of reflection she also credits the god with her survival through poverty, lawlessness, imprisonment and being born a low-caste female in rural India: "God has given me more strength to endure than he has given other women."

As always, stay safe !

Bird

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