Phoolan Devi’s story is a tale of woman who refused to give up to the cruel men’s world but lived a life of a leader who punished her rapists on her own terms and conditions. Born in a lower class family, she was raped by her husband, mercilessly gang raped too by unidentified men. But she did not lose courage, did shoot all 22 rapists who raped her, then contested elections and became MP from UP.
Phoolan Devi’s story sounds like a Bollywood flick!
She was born in a small village where girls were treated as an unfortunate burden, then she was married at an age of 11 to around 30 year-old-man who raped her for many years. At 18, she was gangraped by high caste outlaws, was locked up in Behmai, a town which was once called as Thakur town. Here she was raped many times till she went unconscious.
But this woman of grit and determination did not give up and finally chose a path of courage and leadership and became a gang leader, then a burglar and thereafter a dacoit.
In 1981, she came back to the village where she was raped many times and here she identified two men who had raped her. She asked them of other men who were there with them and when they refused to tell her about there whereabouts, she shot all 22 of them in one go.
This was the biggest bloodbath by a hooligan in India’s record, which caught the attention of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Soon this woman was given suffix of Devi and she was called as Phoolan Devi, an incarnation of the Goddess Durga.
However, she surrendered to the government after it accepted her demands to return her father’s land, to provide a government job to her sibling, and not to offer a death sentence to her gang members.
In 1983, Phoolan was accused for 48 criminal offenses, however, in 1994, a low caste preacher from Uttar Pradesh freed Devi of all the charges that was filed against her and she was finally released in 1994.
In 1996, she stood for the eleventh Lok Sabha election for Samajwadi Party from Mirzapur area in Uttar Pradesh and won the election.
On July 25, 2001,three masked shooters opened fire at Phoolan Devi and she was shot dead outside of her Delhi home. She was rushed to a close by hospital but was stated dead