Behmai Massacre Verdict: 65-Year-Old From Phoolan Devi's Gang Gets Life Sentence (image-twitter/Navayan)
Exactly 43 years after Phoolan Devi and her gang perpetrated the Behmai massacre, a Kanpur court pronounced its verdict on Wednesday, sentencing life imprisonment to one of the two surviving accused.
This is the first conviction involving 35 accused, including Devi herself, who gained notoriety after the incident. Of the total accused, 31 died during the trial period, including Devi.
Judge Amit Malviya found Shyam Babu guilty and acquitted Vishwanath, citing a lack of evidence. In 2016, Vishwanath was declared to be a juvenile at the time of the crime. Babu, now 65, was taken to Kanpur Dehat jail following the verdict. The rest of the accused have passed.
What Is Behmai Massacre?
On February 14, 1981, Phoolan Devi and her gang allegedly killed twenty people in Behmai village in Dehat, to avenge her rape by two men from the “upper caste” Thakur community. Of those massacred, seventeen were Thakurs.
Following the nationwide outrage, the then chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, V. P. Singh, resigned.
What Happened To Phoolan Devi?
Two years after the massacre, Devi, popularly known as the Bandit Queen, surrendered in Madhya Pradesh under an amnesty scheme. She spent eleven years in Gwalior jail, awaiting trial. Released in 1994 after the then Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav withdrew cases against Devi, citing public interest.
She joined politics and was elected in the Lok Sabha, as a member of parliament for the Samajwadi Party in 1996, representing the constituency of Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh. Furthermore, in December 1996, the Supreme Court rejected her plea for dismissal of all charges against her.
Returning home after attending Lok Sabha, Phoolan Devi, 37, was shot dead by three masked gunmen in front of her Ashoka Road residence in Delhi on July 25, 2001.
Devi was an Indian dacoit turned politician belonging to the Mallah subcaste. Married off at the age of eleven, Phoolan Devi was subjected to multiple instances of sexual abuse throughout her life. After the Behmai massacre, Devi became a Robin Hood-like figure among the Other Backward Classes.
