Thakur Phool Singh had the impression she was being defiant and unrepentant and he became sterner. She returned home fighting tears of despair, knowing that she now had a “criminal record”. She was twenty-one years old.

She got an ecstatic welcome as she entered their courtyard. Shiv Narain rushed to her first, wrapping his arms round her knees. His head reached above her waist by now. Moola had cooked a huge fish, which her cousin Mannu had caught in the river that morning, and her youngest sister, Munni, had dressed up in her mother’s sari for the occasion. Her father, too, greeted her warmly, although he refused to eat the fish. He was an orthodox vegetarian and said the very small of it made him ill. Everyone was in high spirits, despite the burden of debt they had incurred in order to free her. Phoolan Devi, knowing the magnitude of her father’s efforts, touched his feet and wept.

Moola had been worried about her daughter’s future in the village and afraid of any further confrontation with Maiyadin and the sarpanch, through the activities of his son. The sarpanch, she admitted, was not a “bad man” but his sons provoked situations he would then have to defend. She talked late into many a night, obsessed by this worry, and eventually all agreed that it would be best if Phoolan went away for a while to the village where Rukhmini lived with her husband in order to maintain a low profile. Meanwhile, they would prepare for the court case and try to recruit the support of other villages to give evidence in their favour. They would try to prove, in a court of law, that Maiyadin had brought misfortune and terror upon them all.

Phoolan Devi was happy to leave for her sister’s home. She had always been close to Rukhmini and knew she would be made to feel welcome. They could spend time together, exchange stories and have some fun. She would also get to see Rukhmini’s first child, Mathra Prasad.

Devidin took her to the highway, where she caught a bus to the pathway leading to her sister’s village. He gave her 25 rupees. Her mother had wrapped a bundle of food for the journey and Munni had given her a fishbone from the river which was considered to be lucky.

What followed is told by Phoolan in her diaries:

“Rukhmini’s house is in the district of Etawah. When I arrived, my sister was on her way to hospital for an operation and took me along.

“We had no idea what was happening in our village but, on the third or fourth day, the police arrived and informed my brother-in-law Rampal that I had been involved in a dacoity [an armed raid] at Maiyadin’s house and that a report had been written against me. Rampal told me my parents had been taken to the police station and were waiting for me there. He offered to accompany me even though Rukhmini was still in hospital. We decided to go to the village first, in order to find out what had happened.

The walk to Kalpi and back some 35-40 kilometres all told exhausted her and her legs gave way. Everyone came to a halt. She tried appealing to Babu Singh Gujar, who led the way; she begged him, through tears of desperation, to let her go. He stuck the barrel of his rifle between her legs and laughed, before hitting her hard across the face. He asked for a knife, threatening to cut off her nose. The shock of the blow, she said, in a strange way gave her a sudden inner strength and stopped crying instantly.

One of the men, obviously the second in command, helped her to her feet and she saw in his eyes that he did not approve of his leader’s way with women. She also realized she had seen him before and she tried to think where it could have been. When she attempted to speak, he pointed ahead with his rifle, told her to keep quiet and keep walking.

At the river, a large barge-like boat was moored close to the edge. During the day, such vessels ferry camel herds and their cargo across the river in both directions, travelling an ancient trade route from Rajastan, through Uttar Pradesh into Madhya Pradesh. The current was strong and the river had already started flooding its banks. Everyone was drenched by the time they had climbed into the boat. Phoolan Devi was pushed forward and instructed to lie down in the bottom of the boast. She did as she was told. She found herself lying in a mixture of river water and camel dung. The gang members sat above her on wooden planks that spanned the boat and she has memories of being surrounded by men’s boots.

She could hear their voices talking casually among themselves as if they had forgotten all about her. Someone was speaking of Kanpur and it was then that she recalled where she had seen the man who had helped her to her feet. It had been in Kanpur, in that teashop with Kailash some years earlier; he had been gambling at a card table.

Phoolan Devi says she was taken downstream, to the other side of the river. She could not calculate how far they had travelled. Her sense of the passing of time was distorted by anxiety and fear. Five minutes could have been fifteen. Five kilometres, ten. She remembers shivering, barely able to speak. Babu Gujar paid the boatmen with a bundle of notes and both, in turn, bent down to touch his feet. All through the journey they had called him. “Thakur Sahib”, as did the others. A coarse-looking man, built like a concrete block, he appeared to be shorter than he was. At any rate, that was Phoolan Devi’s impression as she watched him pay the boatmen. She was ordered out of the boat and Vikram Mallah cut the rope binding her wrists. They began another trek through high grass and wet sand.

Each day the gang moved camp, sometimes carrying food supplies, at other times entering small hamlets and eating in the homes of sympathizers and informers. When the gang entered a village, Phoolan Devi was left to wait in the ravines with two armed guards, finding whatever shelter she could from the driving rain. Plastic sheeting hung over roughly-cut shrubs and branches provided a shelter for Babu Singh Gujar at night. The others slept in the open, or under the partial shelter of tree f they were lucky enough to find one.

It was beneath the awning that Babu Gujar repeatedly raped her during the first two days of captivity. She fought back but he was as strong as a bull and her feeble attempts to defend herself merely amused him and made him more cruel. After he had finished with her, he would push her out of the shelter to sleep in the open. She did not scream or cry out for help, out of a sense of her own mortification.

On the evening of the second day, Babu Gujar was drunk. He dragged her by the arm from one man to the next, asking if anyone wanted “a taste of this Sudra whore”. Vikram Mallah intervened, restraining his leader and making it plain to the rest of the gang that they should not attempt to imitate his behaviour. Babu Gujar was furious at this challenge to his leadership but also knew that his lieutenant, whom he himself had promoted to that position, had the support of many in the gang. Babu Gujar pushed Phoolan to one side and went back to his bottle. The hours that followed were tense but that night he left Phoolan alone, falling asleep, saturated by country liquor. Her respite was short-lived.

Relating these events to the police in 1983, the day she surrendered to the Chief Minister, she said in her statement:

“They had my parents tied up. Then Vikram Mallah and his uncle, Vareylal, caught my hands and dragged me away. I still did not know who they were. They took me to the banks of the Jamuna. I pleaded with them not to take me away at night because I said my reputation would be ruined. They began beating me. Someone said they should disfigure me so that I would not be fit for the Thakurs. When Babu Singh asked for a knife, I said if he spared me I would go with them.”

“So you agreed to go with them,” a police inspector from the C I D department stated, as if summarizing her tale.

“Why are you people so stupid?” she snapped back, demanding to see Chaturvedi. “I’m telling you I was kidnapped and you want to write that I agreed to go with them!”

The officer said he would write down whatever she said. Frustrated, unable to explain the extent of the panic she had felt, nor the violence to which she had been subjected, she continued:

“When we reached Narhan village and they started spreading their raincoats to rest, I realized they were dacoits. I heard them talking. They said they would not kill me but let me go after four days. Meanwhile, I heard Babu Singh asking other members of the gang whether they should cut my nose off. He warned me to stay quietly with them and said if I tried to run away he would kill me. I was so frightened that I assured him I would make no attempt to escape as long as they did not assault me physically.

“They started quarrelling over me, and Vikram Singh Mallah said that no one was to touch Phoolan. Babu Singh said that he would keep me and then they compromised that for eight days no one was to touch Phoolan, and after that she would live with whoever wanted her. But Vikram Mallah was bent on killing Babu Singh Gujar and in three days, finding an opportunity, he killed him. This killing took place at Mangalwala Thana in Orraiya district, Etawah. He took all his arms, which consisted of three Mausers, and went to Asta village, where he distributed money to everyone around him.”

Speaking from prison, Phoolan Devi recalled the events of that night, 7 July 1979, the night Vikram Mallah killed his leader in defence of her honour.

It was the third day of her captivity and the tensions between Babu Singh and Vikram were apparent to all, after the incident of the previous night. They moved to another camp and Phoolan was given the task of cooking for the men on a makeshift fire. Another fire was lit for warmth and some of the men sat around it. In all there were twenty-five men in the gang. Babu Singh, after another bout of drinking, started an argument with Vikram Mallah, reminding him that he had made him what he was.

“Without me you would be nothing!” he declared. “Don’t forget, you used to carry our baggage like a coolie and run errands for us like a boy, before I put you where you are!”

At first Vikram Mallah fended off these remarks with casual retorts but then Babu Singh, riled by his dismissive attitude, said in defiance of his “agreement” with his lieutenant to “leave the woman alone for eight days”, that he was in the mood for a woman “tonight” and no Mallah dog would stop him. At this point, Vikram said, “Thakur Sahib, what is the point in abusing her? She is frightened enough already.”

“Fright? Abuse?” Babu Singh laughed back. “I’ll show you Mallahs… I’ll teach you to remember that this is a gang made up of Thakur men… not fishermen!”

With his hand on the belt of his trousers as if to undo it, he was reaching for his .303 Mauser rifle when Vikram Mallah ended his life with a single shot. Two other men, distant relatives of Babu Singh Gujar, moved as if to pick up their weapons and within seconds fell to the ground, blood oozing from their wounds.

Phoolan Devi was stunned. Three dead men lay before her. She says she felt as if her honour had been restored. No man had ever taken such a stand for any woman that she knew of. She went forward and touched Vikram Mallah’s feet in gratitude.

There was a moment’s silence, then Bharat Singh and Madho Singh, Vikram Mallah’s closest friends and allies in the gang, rushed forward and embraced him, shouting, “Jai! Jai! Vikram Mallah ki jai!” Other men joined the cheer and Vikram Mallah became the undisputed leader of the gang.

Although there had been no voices of dissent, it was an uneasy alliance of castes that now existed in the gang. Babu Singh had been a Gujar, on a par with Thakirs, both belonging to the same warrior caste of Kshatriyas. He had recruited others of his own caste into the gang, in addition to men of the lower castes. Under his leadership, the hierarchy in the gang had more or less reflected the social order as it stands in villages. In these terms, Vikram Mallah ranked among the lowest, belonging to a sub-caste of Sudras, a did Phoolan Devi, Madho Singh, Bharat Singh and a handful of others.

By taking over leadership of the gang, he had completely reversed the balance of power within it.