Bandit Queen's killing revives festival

Phoolan Devi was shot three times in the head and twice in the body outside her home on July 25.

LUCKNOW, India -- A Hindu New Year festival has been revived after a gap of 20 years in the small village that was home to Phoolan Devi, the Bandit Queen.

Villagers in Behmai vowed not to celebrate the Diwali festival of lights until the massacre of 20 upper-class men was avenged, a crime for which Devi was charged but never found guilty.

With the murder of Devi the villagers now feel that justice has been served and they can once again celebrate.

The Bandit Queen was killed in a hail of gunmen's bullets outside her home in New Delhi in July.

Many saw Devi as a wronged woman because she claimed the murdered upper caste Hindu men had gang raped her.

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Millions mourned the 38-year-old Member of Parliament who became an icon for the aspirations of the lower castes.

All along she said that she had never killed anyone but was fighting against oppression by upper caste Hindus.

Surrender

"Not a (fire) cracker was heard in the past 20 years in this village," V.N. Sengar, a lawyer, told Reuters.

Sengar had campaigned to reopen the criminal cases against Devi that were dropped after she surrendered to the police in 1983.

Only pujas -- the Hindu's expression of religious devotion -- were conducted during the Diwali for the past 20 years.

However, with the murder of Devi the villagers in India's most populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh feel able to join the rest of India in lighting lamps and fire-crackers to mark Diwali.

The Hindustan Times newspaper said shots were fired in the air in Behmai and the village folk scrubbed their huts clean to mark Diwali this year.

"Its the beginning of a new era in Behmai," the paper quoted village headman Gandhi Singh as saying.

The young in the village, who had grown up pledging to avenge the death of the upper caste Thakurs, or warriors, held a feast of mutton and liquor to celebrate.

"Don't you think this Diwali is special for all of us?" 20-year-old Lallan Singh told Reuters. "After years of waiting, the Almighty has delivered justice."

Bandit Queen

One of India's best-known women, Devi's life began in poverty and violence.

She later became a legend, after 11 years in prison and four years as the Bandit Queen in the ravines of Central India.

She denied leading the massacre of the upper caste Hindus in Behmai, but said her career in crime was driven by a desire for revenge after she became the victim of rapes she said upper caste men subjected her to as a young woman.

Behmai villagers say that in February 1981, Devi ordered 22 men to kneel down on the banks of the Yamuna river and gunned them down. Only two survived. Pappu Yadav, a fellow parliamentarian said: "Phoolan Devi was a victim of oppression, fighting a war against men who raped her."

Three men were arrested in July in connection with the murder of Devi, who was gunned down by masked men outside her high-security New Delhi home.

But charges have yet to be brought against them and police say investigations are continuing.