15. A Bandit Queen’s Decision on How to Deal With Her Tormentors Shocked India
After she fled from Behmai, Phoolan Devi formed a new bandit crew, this one comprised exclusively of lower castes like her. On the evening of February 14th, 1981, several months after her escape, Phoolan returned to Behmai at the head of her gang. She demanded that the villagers produce the bandit brothers who had imprisoned her, but they could not be found. If she couldn’t exterminate her tormentors, others in the village would pay. Phoolan lined up about two dozen of the village’s young men, including some who had assaulted her, and ordered them killed. What came to be known as the Behmai Massacre shocked India. A massive manhunt was ordered, but Phoolan evaded her pursuers, helped by the region’s poor, who saw her as a heroine.
Two years after the massacre, Phoolan tired of life on the lam, and negotiated a surrender for herself and the remnants of her gang. As over 10,000 people watched, she and her followers laid down their rifles, and were taken into custody. A villain to some, a heroine to others, Phoolan was kept in pretrial detention for eleven years, until the charges were finally dismissed and she was released in 1994. She became a women’s rights activist, and in 1995, one year after her release, she was elected to India’s parliament. Her eventful life was cut short in 2001, when a man who sought vengeance for the upper caste men killed by Phoolan assassinated her as she exited her Delhi home.