Word: phoolan
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Rape victim. Marauder. Murderer. Superstar! Phoolan Devi, an outcast Hindu woman, became a folk hero as head of a band of outlaws preying on India's corrupt alite. Part Joan of Arc, part Ma Barker, on Feb. 14, 1981, she staged her own St. Valentine's Day massacre, leading the slaughter of 22 villagers she suspected of aiding her enemies. Yet her surrender, in 1983, was on her own terms, to the cheers of 10,000 supporters. On her release from prison last year, three political parties asked her to run for office...
Part Joan of Arc, part Ma Barker, Phoolan Devi in the early 1980's became a folk hero as head of a band of outlaws preying on India's corrupt elite. Her movie bio, saysTIME's Richard Corliss, "has an Indian heart but a Hollywood pulse; an assaultive experience, blistering with ripe obscenities, the frontal nudity of its star and three stark scenes in which Phoolan is raped --- enough to have the film banned 10 times over in a country where a bare shoulder can send the censors frothing." "Bandit Queen" was indeed banned in India, but for what director...
...animus? Within months of her betrothal at age 11, Phoolan was beaten and expelled by her husband for suspected infidelities. Soon after returning to her parents, she began attracting a male audience by bathing naked in the local river. Raped by a group of voyeurs, she blithely continued in her habits until her arrest in early 1979 on, ironically, a false charge of dacoity. After being raped by policemen and prisoners, she was released...
...subsequent rise to criminal eminence was swift: she fell in with a dacoit named Babu Gujar, seduced his lieutenant Vikram Mallaha and, while bathing Gujar one evening, stabbed him to death. Thus Mallaha became chieftain, Phoolan second in command. Dressed in blue jeans and a multicolored turban, brandishing a stolen bullhorn and a rifle, she quickly earned a reputation as a deadly shot. When Mallaha's restive followers killed him, Phoolan formed her own gang. On Feb. 14, 1981, to avenge her lover's murder, she and her marauders gunned down 20 apparently innocent citizens in the village...
...bandit's life is more glamorous than the reality. "All dacoits are dead by the time they are 30," says a senior police official. "The nights are lonely. She is no longer the beauty she once was." She is also hunted by vengeful enemies. As a result, Phoolan has begun negotiating for police protection in exchange for her surrender. The legends will surely persist, but Phoolan may be shedding her image as India's deadliest woman. Two weeks ago, her gang encircled a bicyclist near the Chambal River. Phoolan scolded her victim for traveling alone in such dangerous...