Phoolan Devi (Hindi: [pʰuː.lən d̪eː.ʋiː], 10 August 1963 – 25 July 2001), popularly known as the Bandit Queen, was an Indian dacoit (bandit) who became a politician, serving as a member of parliament until her assassination. She was a woman of the Mallah subcaste 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 married off at the age of eleven and being sexually abused by various people, she joined a gang of dacoits. Her gang robbed higher-caste villages and held up trains and vehicles. When she punished her rapists and evaded capture by the authorities, she became a heroine to the Other Backward Classes who saw her as a Robin Hood figure. Phoolan Devi was charged in absentia for the 1981 Behmai massacre, in which twenty Thakur men were killed, allegedly on her command. After this event, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh resigned, and calls to apprehend her were amplified. She surrendered two years later in a carefully negotiated settlement and spent eleven years in Gwalior prison, awaiting trial.
Phoolan Devi was released in 1994 after her charges were set aside. She subsequently became a politician and was elected as a member of parliament for the Samajwadi Party in 1996. She lost her seat in 1998, but 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 convicted for the murder in 2014. At the time of her death, she was still fighting against the reinstituted criminal charges, having lost a 1996 appeal to the Supreme Court to have the charges dropped. 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 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 offered differing versions to suit her changing circumstances.
Phoolan Devi was born on 10 August 1963, in the village of Gorha Ka Purwa in Jalaun district, Uttar Pradesh, India. The land is crossed by the Yamuna and Chambal rivers and is filled with gorges and ravines, making it suitable terrain for dacoits (bandits). Her family was poor and from the Mallah subcaste, which lies towards the bottom of the Hindu caste system in India, with Mallahs being Shudras who traditionally work as fishermen. Phoolan Devi and her sisters made dung cakes to burn as fuel, as is common practice in the region; her family grew chickpeas, sunflowers and pearl millet.
Phoolan Devi's mother was called Moola and her father Devidin; she had four sisters and one brother. Devidin had one brother, Biharilal, who had a son called Maiyadin. Biharilal and Maiyadin stole land from Phoolan Devi's 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 his son continued to harass the family and steal their crops, aiming to drive them away from the village. At the age of 10, Phoolan Devi decided to protest against the injustice. With her older sister Rukhmini, she sat in the disputed land 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. 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.
Following these events, Phoolan Devi's parents decided to arrange a marriage for her. She was married to a man called Puttilal, who offered 100 Indian rupees (equivalent to ₹400 or £4.20 in 2023), a cow and a bicycle to her parents. According to the version related by her to her biographer Mala Sen, it was agreed that Phoolan Devi would start living with him after three years, but Puttilal came back within three months and took her away. He was three times her age; she refused his sexual advances and fell sick. When her parents came and collected her, they took her to a doctor who diagnosed measles. 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. Phoolan Devi was sent 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 Kailash's wife to go back to her own village.
Once Phoolan Devi was back in Gorha Ka Purwa, the second son of the village leader became infatuated with her and when she did not reciprocate his affections, he attacked her. Again, Phoolan Devi needed to leave the village and Maiyadin pressured the family to ask Puttilal to take her back, which he did. In the meantime, Puttilal had taken another wife who often mistreated Phoolan Devi. After several years, Puttilal abandoned Phoolan Devi beside the Yamuna River and she again returned to the parental home. 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. She later told The Atlantic that she was arrested because Maiyadin accused her of robbing him. Mala Sen asked her if she had been raped at the police station and Phoolan Devi replied: "They had plenty of fun at my expense and beat the hell out of me too." 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 recorded many instances of women being attacked and murdered by men. The director of the Women's Feature Service commented regarding the case of Phoolan Devi that "quite often rape is used as a method of control and punishment to keep women in their place".
In July 1979, a gang of bandits led by Babu Gujjar kidnapped Phoolan Devi from her family's home, for reasons she explained in multiple ways. Gujjar subjugated her and raped her repeatedly. Vikram Mallah, the second in command, became fond of Phoolan Devi and objected to her mistreatment, so he killed Gujjar and became leader of the gang. He trained Phoolan Devi to use a rifle and the two fell in love. Over the following year, the group robbed vehicles and looted higher caste villages, sometimes disguising themselves using stolen police uniforms. The gang lived in the ravines, constantly moving between places such as Devariya, Kanpur and Orai. They located Puttilal and punished him violently. As news of Phoolan Devi's exploits spread, she became popular with the lower castes, who called her Dasyu Sundari (Beautiful Bandit) and celebrated her as a Robin Hood figure, who robbed from the rich to give to the poor. She was seen as an incarnation of the Hindu goddess Durga and a doll was produced of her in police uniform wearing a bandoleer.
A former leader of the gang, Sri Ram Singh, was released from prison together with his brother Lalla Ram Singh in 1980; they were Thakur men (Thakurs being a subcaste of the Kshatriya caste) and thus a higher caste than the other members. After they rejoined the bandits, a power struggle ensued and Sri Ram murdered Vikram Mallah. Without the latter's protection, Phoolan Devi was a prisoner of Sri Ram; he took her to the remote village of Behmai where she was repeatedly raped by other Thakurs. In a final indignity, she was forced to collect water for him from the well whilst naked, in front of the villagers.