Phoolan Devi was born at the lowest rung of India’s caste system. At 11, her family married her off in exchange for a cow and a bicycle. It was only the beginning of a life marked by abuse. As a teenager, a gang kidnapped her and, according to her own account, held her captive and raped her for weeks in a village called Behmai.
She managed to escape. And she returned with her own armed gang. More than 20 men from that village were lined up and shot on February 14, 1981, in one of the most remembered crimes of modern India. She always denied being present, but the event made her a legend to some and a murderer to others.
She surrendered to the authorities in 1983 and was released from prison in 1994. Two years later, this woman whom the world knew as the ‘Bandit Queen’ entered the Indian parliament. In 2001, at 38, she was shot dead in front of her home. Sher Singh Rana, who belonged to a high caste, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment in Delhi.
