Lady Killer

A career in crime may end

They travel in gangs through the hills of the state of Madhya Pradesh, robbing wayfarers as did highwaymen of old. Villagers admire them, movies glorify their exploits. For eight centuries, India's dacoits (dakoo is the Hindi word for bandit) have been the buccaneering heroes of pulp-magazine adventures. But none is more compelling than the tale of Phoolan Devi, 27. Over the past four years she has become her country's most notorious dacoit. Once pursued by 2,000 police, she has been charged with 70 cases of banditry and is suspected of some 50 murders. Fanciful speculation convicts her of still more. "For every man this girl has killed, she has slept with two," says a police inspector. "Sometimes she sleeps with them first before she bumps them off."

Why the animus? Within months of her betrothal at age 11, Phoolan was beaten and expelled by her husband for suspected infidelities. Soon after returning to her parents, she began attracting a male audience by bathing naked in the local river. Raped by a group of voyeurs, she blithely continued in her habits until her arrest in early 1979 on, ironically, a false charge of dacoity. After being raped by policemen and prisoners, she was released.

Her subsequent rise to criminal eminence was swift: she fell in with a dacoit named Babu Gujar, seduced his lieutenant Vikram Mallaha and, while bathing Gujar one evening, stabbed him to death. Thus Mallaha became chieftain, Phoolan second in command. Dressed in blue jeans and a multicolored turban, brandishing a stolen bullhorn and a rifle, she quickly earned a reputation as a deadly shot. When Mallaha's restive followers killed him, Phoolan formed her own gang. On Feb. 14, 1981, to avenge her lover's murder, she and her marauders gunned down 20 apparently innocent citizens in the village of Behmai.

But the myth of a bandit's life is more glamorous than the reality. "All dacoits are dead by the time they are 30," says a senior police official. "The nights are lonely. She is no longer the beauty she once was." She is also hunted by vengeful enemies. As a result, Phoolan has begun negotiating for police protection in exchange for her surrender. The legends will surely persist, but Phoolan may be shedding her image as India's deadliest woman. Two weeks ago, her gang encircled a bicyclist near the Chambal River. Phoolan scolded her victim for traveling alone in such dangerous country and, when she learned that he had lost part of a leg in the 1971 war with Pakistan, gave him $20 and sent him home with greetings for his family. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.