Phoolan Devi Faced Injustice, Mulayam Singh Backed Her, Says Akhilesh Yadav

Phoolan Devi was a rare victim of torture, insult, and injustice, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said on Saturday.

He also reminisced about the role the late Mulayam Singh Yadav, his father, played in sending the ex-dacoit to the corridors of power in the national capital.

Speaking at unveiling of a statue of BR Ambedkar here, Akhilesh Yadav said, "Not only revolutionaries, there was a time when best dacoits were from here. They had stories of their own. Some people of that generation, who are still alive, would have seen them coming on horses." He added, "Our friends are taking the name of Phoolan Devi. Phoolan Devi had a different history. Maybe on Earth, (or) in the history of the world, no woman would have faced so much torture, insult, and injustice, she did." Akhilesh Yadav also recalled meeting on a flight Shekhar Kapur, the director of Phoolan Devi biopic Bandit Queen, and his uncle, who was accompanying him, asking the filmmaker why he failed to mention Mulayam's name at the end of the film.

"Why did you not mention the name of Netaji (Mulayam) and the 'samajwadis,'" Akhilesh Yadav recalled his uncle asking Shekhar Kapur.

He said it was the then Mulayam Singh government that withdrew cases against Phoolan Devi and other dacoits involved in the Behmai massacre.

"The dacoits' condition for surrender was that they be released from the prison. Everybody was freed except Phoolan Devi. Hence, Netaji withdrew the cases against her," Akhilesh Yadav said.

Phoolan Devi, who later turned to politics, along with her gang members, was accused of killing 20 people belonging to the Thakur community in Kanpur Dehat's Behmai village on February 14, 1981.

She was elected from the Mirzapur Lok Sabha constituency in 1996 and 1999 from the Samajwadi Party.

Phoolan Devi was shot dead outside her MP bungalow in Delhi on July 25, 2001.

"People from Etawah and Auraiya are highly revolutionary. And why should they not be? Where (river) Chambal flows in the vicinity, and where we can see ravines. I don't think there are such ravines anywhere," the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said.

He also mentioned Allen Octavian Hume, the founder of the Indian National Congress, and the collector of Etawah, when the first war of Indian Independence broke out in 1857.

"And history is a witness that AO Hume fled when the revolutionaries came for him," he said.

"History also says that when he left India, he not only took back his belongings but also the country's birds in 5,000 wooden boxes. He made a museum of those birds," Yadav said.

According to the Etawah administration, "The city was an important centre of the Revolt of 1857 (Allan Octavian Hume, the founder of Indian National Congress was district collector then)." Yadav also sought to woo the Dalit voters in the area by mentioning Kanshi Ram, the Bahujan Samajwadi Party patriarch who won first from the constituency.

"These were the voters of this place, who had sent Kanshi Ram, the founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party, to the Lok Sabha. He was unable to win from any seat. It is recorded in history that it was Netaji and the samajwadis, who campaigned for Kanshi Ram ji," he said.

Kanshi Ram was elected as the Lok Sabha MP from Etawah in 1991 on a BSP ticket.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)