Court convicts Sher Singh Rana for Phoolan Devi assassination

While it took 13 years for the conviction of Rana, 11 other accused were let off by the court.

Rana reportedly said after the verdict why was he found guilty only when all others were acquitted.

On July 25, 2001 Phoolan was shot dead at the gates of the house allotted to her as MP in New Delhi allegedly by former rival bandit group whose relations were massacred at her order, which was infamously known as Behmai Massacre. 

Rana claimed that he killed Phoolan Devi to avenge the deaths of upper-caste men in the Behmai massacre.  At least 22  upper-caste villagers, including two men who had raped Phoolan, were lined up in the village square and shot dead by her gang.

After the killing, Sher Singh Rana had surrendered. However, he was successful in a jailbreak in 2004 when he escaped from the high security Tihar Jail and made his way to Afghanistan. Later he was arrested after two years from Kolkata.

Phoolan Devi was a Samajwadi Party MP representing Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh.

Born in a poor family in Jalaun District of Uttar Pradesh, Phoolan had struggled all her life, and was subjected to torture and mass rape by upper caste men besides a bad marriage as a child, leading to her ending up as a dreaded dacoit.

Phoolan later surrendered after negotiations with the authorities and was jailed.

When she was released from jail, she joined politics and became an MP from Mirzapur in 1996 under Samajwadi Party. She was a sitting MP when she was assassinated.

Filmmaker Shekhar Kapur made the internationally acclaimed movie Bandit Queen (1994) on the life of Phoolan Devi based on a book by Mala Sen.