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COVER STORY: 1963-2001: PHOOLAN DEVI
Bloody Finale
Her life was turbulent and followed no script but the
drama around her murder follows a clear pattern aimed at political returns
By Sayantan Chakravarty and Sharad Gupta in Mirzapur
Her
name, unremembered for many months until a bright and humid July afternoon,
has always evoked excess: of wretchedness and desperation, trauma and
terror, violence and crime, and sometimes, it seemed, even of redemption.
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POINT BLANK: Phoolan's body at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in Delhi
after the shooting
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Phoolan Devi had long broken off her partnership
with the gun and bid goodbye to Chambal's ravines. When she died at the
gate of her Delhi residence in a hail of bullets fired by three masked
men on July 25 it was as though her past life had returned, knocking loudly
on her front door. It was an act that belonged to the old school of rough
justice, but it is entirely possible that the real motive for Phoolan's
murder isn't hidden somewhere in the ravines of Chambal but in her role
as a member of the capital's political class.
It was the third day of the monsoon session of
Parliament and during the lunch break Phoolan visited a doctor at the
annexe for a round of physiotherapy to ease the pain in her knees. Amar
Singh, Samajwadi Party (SP) general secretary, told india today that Phoolan
was "forlorn, worried and not her usual self". After the treatment
she was offered a lift home by Etawah's SP MP Raghuraj Singh Shakya. It
was about 1.20 p.m., and in 10 minutes she was outside the gates of 44
Ashoka Road.
Phoolan and her personal security officer Balwinder
Singh headed down the 20 yards between the main road and the gates when
three men in their mid-20s closed in and opened fire. Phoolan received
six bullets, including three in the temple, from point blank range and
three more hit Balwinder. As the MP collapsed, the injured bodyguard fired
at the assailants. The three men ran to a green Maruti car parked nearby
and sped away. The reason the police disbelieve the theory of an old enemy's
revenge is because the 1986 Maruti (CIM 907) was the same vehicle that
dropped Phoolan to Parliament that morning. It was driven by Pankaj, a
25-year-old law student from Roorkee known to Phoolan. His real name is
Sher Singh Rana, and he was a familiar figure in SP circles.
The getaway car was tailed by a scooterist (whose
identity is being kept secret by the police). This man has provided descriptions
of the three killers who began to pull off their masks in the car. The
scooterist was forced against the pavement and lost his balance. The Maruti
car was later found abandoned on Pandit Pant Marg, with the killers having
escaped in an autorickshaw commandeered at gunpoint.
The shots brought people from the house outside.
They included Uma Kashyap, the Roorkee district head of the SP's women
wing and the president of the Eklavya Sena floated by Phoolan, Kashyap's
husband Vijay Kumar, an Uttar Pradesh government employee, and Phoolan's
nephew Vivek. They rushed Phoolan to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital where
she was pronounced dead on arrival.
In the hospital Phoolan's husband Umed Singh
wept like a child lost in a crowd, as did Kashyap, who went from being
"very, very close" to Phoolan to a suspect in the case. She
was closely questioned because she had driven from Roorkee to Delhi with
her husband in the car used in the crime. Kashyap broke down and confessed
she knew Pankaj who was like a "foster brother" to her. The
police suspect that Pankaj's two friends, accomplices in the murder, may
have met Kashyap hours before the assassination. Says Joint Commissioner
(Crime) K.K. Paul, who is heading the probe: "There is a fair possibility
she knows a lot about the men who committed the crime." The police
believe this was not a professional killing: the gunmen had risked capture
by making the attempt in an area where there is a police patrol car every
500m. By switching to an autorickshaw at gunpoint, they allowed themselves
to be noticed and left behind their masks and two of the murder weapons,
both providing valuable forensic evidence.
Unlike most other political killings, there
was little dissonance between the victim and the crime because Phoolan's
death closed a circle and ended a life that had taken much of its identity
from violence-as victim and perpetrator.
From 1981 to 1983, Phoolan became a national
anti-heroine who spread terror across eastern Uttar Pradesh and the Chambal,
killing, kidnapping and stealing, and escaping every trap set for her.
It began with the massacre of 20 Thakurs in the village of Behmai in Uttar
Pradesh, as Phoolan searched for two locals who had belonged to her gang.
They had killed her lover Vikram Mallah, held her captive and gangraped
her for three weeks. Behmai was payback-that it came at the hands of a
low caste Mallah from the fishing community and led to the deaths of upper-caste
Thakurs only added to the Phoolan legend.
It took two years after Behmai for the authorities
to contact the elusive bandits and negotiate a surrender by which time
Phoolan had been elevated to the status of a folk heroine. The tales grew
more and more fanciful as did the nicknames, and when the object of many
a tall tale turned out not to be a dasyu sundari (dacoit beauty) but in
the words of a contemporary report, "a drab-looking, highly moody,
childishly petulant and disastrously short-tempered girl", the fascination
paled.
It was sparked off again 11 years later when
she was released from prison without trial and the subsequent discovery
of her story by the media, in the form of books and film, including the
celebrated and controversial Bandit Queen by Shekhar Kapur. All of which
led to an entry into politics, under the umbrella of Mulayam Singh Yadav's
SP.
An official residence in the high-security zone
in Delhi, a bungalow in south Delhi, a seat in Parliament, the trappings
of respectability and respect-it would appear that Phoolan had shaken
off the shackles of her violent past and made the most of her second chance.
But the last few weeks were far from happy and the police believe many
clues to her sudden death may lie in a closer look there.
A month ago she approached a cabinet minister,
saying she was unwell and that her political mentors and family were exploiting
her. She wanted all cases and charges against her to be dropped. Clearly,
there was more trouble on the home front than the pictures of her weeping
widower Umed let on. Neighbours at her south Delhi Chittaranjan Park home
say that Phoolan would often berate her husband for drinking heavily and
not allow him to enter the house. According to friends, she had come to
believe that Umed had married her for the money acquired through the sale
of film and book rights. Her friends allege that Umed, who was already
married with a child elsewhere, was pressuring Phoolan to transfer the
property acquired in Delhi to his name. The couple regularly filed complaints
against each other at the local police station. A friend of Phoolan says,
"We kept advising her to get a divorce but she felt a broken marriage
would affect her political career."
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