INDIA’S BANDIT QUEEN

  • 28 Dec - 03 Jan, 2025
  • Mag The Weekly
  • Fiction

MAN SINGH, LIKE Phoolan Devi, was of the Sudra caste, born into a sub-caste of milkmen or herdsmen. His social sanding in the village hierarchy was the same as that of the Mallahs. In his statement to the police in February 1983 he said of himself:

“I was born in a village. I was not interested in studying. I did not help much in the house. Farming was our mainstay and I would help with that. My father died nine years ago but my mother is still alive. My father used to till the land and I have three other brothers who are also farmers. They now have a dairy. I was outlawed.

“One day seven years ago, dacoits Balwan Singh and Baba Mustaqeem came quite close to our house. Balwan had killed a police sub-inspector but the police accused us of it. There of us, two of my brothers and I, were implicated in this case so we had to run away and eventually joined the gang of Baba Mustaqeem.At that time this gang consisted of only three members and with me it made four. Two of my brothers were arrested by the Kalpi police and then set free on bail. The case is still going on. Later, the police arrested my brother in connection with another case for which he is still in prison. My brother, Baba, who was let out on bail, was taken from Kalpi thana on the pretext of being brought to see me but on the way they killed him in what they described as an ‘encounter’. Another person who was with them at the time, a Chamar, Ramsnehi, was also killed in the same false encounter. These killings angered me and to avenge my brother’s death, three years later, I killed the Yadavs in Dharma village because they had been our enemies. I was still with Baba Mustaqeem’s gang at the time. I killed seven more people at the same time, all Yadavs, but I do not remember their names.”

By the time Man Singh met Phoolan Devi towards the end of 1980, and offered to share with her the leadership of his gang, he had discovered, like most other bandit leaders, that kidnaps-for-ransom or looting commercial trucks that travelled unlit highways at night were the safest and most lucrative ways of operating. Raids on villages were usually left for acts of revenge, against particular people or against a particular caste of people, rather than for financial gain, although each raid brought some wealth, usually money or gold, into the gang’s coffers.

Impressed by her aim, Man Singh chose a .303 Mauser rifle for Phoolan. He had seen her bringing down wild river duck at dawn with a single shot. Being a vegetarian, he did not eat any meat himself but he had no objection to the rest enjoying it. He was a quiet and introspective man, the opposite of Vikram Mallah, and the more he was drawn to Phoolan, the more aloof he kept, treating her as his partner rather than his woman.

All this was new to Phoolan. Not only did Man Singh and Baba Mustaqeem support her desire for vengeance, they treated her as an equal, encouraging her individuality. Man Singh always asked her opinions, discussed plans, debated contradictions, before making decisions. He trusted her judgement but also relied on his own experience, and they worked well together. Sexually, he never imposed himself, mucy to her surprise. Other members of the gang considered her to be his property though he did not treat her as such and their interaction gave her the protection of privacy, which she had never experienced before. Talking about those first few months with him, she said from jail:

“My onethought was of revenge. Whenever we heard that the Singh brothers had been seen in a particular village, we would attack the place. We never found them, not even in the villages where they were supposed to be hiding. We would carry a loudhailer and I would call out to Sri Ram: ‘If you have a beard on your face, if you are a man, come out and kill me in the open. I stand before you. But you low-down traitor, you Thakur dog! You can only shoot from behind. Why do you run now? Why do you allow innocent villagers to pay or your sins?’”

Around this period, special units of police had been sent into the area, as local Congressmen and politicians of every hue demanded “positive solutions to the dacoit menace”. Each state had an Inspector General of Police (IG), in charge of Anti-Dacoity Operations. Thousands of armed police were involve the Special Armed Force (SAF) in Madhya Pradesh, the Police Armed Constabulary (PAC) in Uttar Pradesh and the Rajastan Armed Constabulary (RAC) all equipped with automatic, self-loading rifles. A formidable force that kept gangs constantly on the move. With varying prices on their heads, gang leaders were never sure of their own safety. Inter-gang rivalries often resulted in tip-offs to the police from one gang about the movements of another. No one could be trusted. Suppliers were made to eat the food they brought as a precaution against poison.

The police department was also riddled with inter-state rivalry. Each state claimed more success than the other. The police high command had come out forcefully, demanding more funds from the central government in Delhi to pay for additional men, better training and the setting up of an intelligence network based on paid informers. Without the offer of money, villagers tended to be tight-lipped. They also complained o the lack of support and too much interference from local partymen, mostly Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), who were known to fraternize with certain dacoit gangs, protecting their contacts, in exchange for village votes.

In this political climate, Phoolan Devi and Man Singh continued to operate, steadily gaining a reputation for themselves. Their relationship had developed and they now lived as lovers. She was still obsessed with avenging Vikram’s death but Man Singh did not object. In many ways he admired her loyalty to the memory of the dead bandit leader. He had known Vikram only superficially but had heard much about him through Mustaqeem, who had genuinely cared for Vikram Mallah as a friend, almost a “son”, even though the age difference between them had been only a few months. He assured Phoolan Devi, putting up with all her moods and outbursts, that he had not forgotten the Singh brothers but, at the same time, money had to be earned to keep the men happy. Venturing into a village to kill one of their contacts, he told her, was a waste of time, futile and dangerous. The men would not continue to support her vendetta if they were asked, time and time again, to court arrest or death for no material gain.

Phoolan, in a sullen mood, said to him one day, “All you can think about is money and the men.”

“That’s not true,” he replied.

“Well, then,” she said, “Baijamau must be punished.” Baijamau was the village near which Vikram had been killed. She knew it well; she knew which part housed the Thakurs and she knew the poor end too, inhabited by people of her own caste.

Man Singh agreed in order to demonstrate his solidarity, adding that, once this was done, they had to come up with a plan that would make some money. “Anger alone will get us nowhee,” he told her.

The night they entered the village, in December 1980, they raided 90 homes and Phoolan Devi showed neither compassion nor mercy. She pushed both men and women around, prodding them with the butt of her rifle, threatening to kill their children, just for the pleasure of seeing terror in the eyes of Thakurs. They left the rest of the village untouched.

“You Thakur bastards!” she screamed, as she spat in the faces of men, slapping the women who stood in her way. She demanded to know where the Singh brothers were, when they had last been to the village. “We are here because of them,” she informed them. “If they ever come here again, if you eve give them any help again, I will burn your homes to the ground.” As the gang left the village with money, silver and gold in the form of jewellery, she grabbed the loudhailer from Man Singh and shouted into the night. “Remember, you Thakur pigs, do not fool with Phoolan Devi. Vikram Mallah ki jai!”

The incident attracted the press and newspaper articles began to appear, placing Phoolan Devi among the most “wanted” bandits. Thakur power and domination had never been challenged in this way before. Until the early 1970s, most dacoit gangs had consisted of upper-caste men, who had provided a degree of protection to those of their community, but now, it seemed, the tables were turning. It was a process that was to dominate the whole of Indian political life throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, with those of the lower castes suddenly aware of their potential for power and their ability to demand fundamental changes at all levels of society.

After the attack on the Thakurs of Baijamau, Phoolan Devi and Man Singh decided to camp near the village of Sindaus.

A reporter writing for The Onlooker, an Indian current-affairs magazine, visited the village later and said: “Sindaus has been known for its Phoolan Devi association. Being of a Gujar Ahir Mallah area, it has precisely the caste-mix which corresponds with the composition of Phoolan’s gang. Diwan Gujar, Man Singh and Phoolan being a Gujar, Ahir and Mallah respectively, the gang gets not only public sympathy in the whole area but also shelter when it needs it.”

Phoolan had many contacts in Sindaus, dating back to her time with Vikram Mallah. His death had resulted in a great deal of sympathy for her, much admiration for her act of retribution, so she and Man Singh received a warm welcome, with endless offers of “safe” homes in which to hide, food and anything else they might need. Alert to the dangers surrounding them, Man Singh insisted that the gang sleep in the surrounding jungle; villagers provided them with the best bedding available and two elaborately-cooked meals a day. Phoolan told me that was one occasion on which she really did feel like a queen. “They even brought us mosquito-nets!” she said, he eyes bright as a child’s.

Sindaus was to be the location for an encounter with the Uttar Pradesh police later on, but in the weeks following the attack on Baijamau Phoolan Devi remained undetected, living a life of leisure, which greatly impressed other members of her gang. They camped under an enormous banyan tree, considered to be sacred. Villagers who passed it paid tribute to the tree and grains of rice, shells of coconuts and faint traces of yellow and vermilion were reminders of this ritual. Man Singh thought the location was auspicious, believing in the folklore of trees that Major-General Sir William Sleeman recorded in his memories, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official:

The Peepul-tree (Ficus Indicus) is everywhere sacred to the gods, who are supposed to sit among its leaves, and listen to the music of their rustling. The deponent takes one of these leaves in his hand, and invokes the god who sits above him, to crush him, or those dear to him, as he crushes the leaf in his hand, if he speaks anything but the truth; he then plucks and crushes the leaf, and states what he has to say.

The large cotton-tree is among the wild tribes of India, the favourite seat of gods still more terrible, because their superintendence is confined exclusively to the neighbour-hood; and having their attention less occupied they can venture to make a more minute scrutiny into the conduct of the people immediately around them. The Peepul is occupied by one or other of the Hindu triad, the god of creation, preservation, or destruction, who have the affairs of the universe to look after; but the cotton and other trees are occupied by some minor deities who are vested with the local superintendence over the affairs of a district, or perhaps of a single village.

In footnotes Sleeman adds:

The sacred trees and plants of India are very numerous… Nearly every village and hamlet has its local ghost, usually the shrine of a childless man, or one whose funeral rites remained for some reason unperformed. In the expressive popular phrase he is “deprived of water”. The pious make obligations to his cenotaph twice a year and propitiate his ghost with offerings of water to allay his thirst in the lower world. The primeval serpent-worship is perpetuated in the reverence paid to traditional village-snakes. Of the local ghosts some are beneficent. Sometimes they are only mischievous, like Robin Goodfellow, and will milk the cows, and sour the milk, or pull your hair, if you wander about at night in certain well-known uncanny places.

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