Ex Bandit Queen & current Parliament Member Phoolan Devi robbed at gunpoint
theatlantic.com
people.virginia.edu
people.virginia.edu
November 11, 1999, 18:00 Hrs (IST)
New Delhi: Phoolan Devi, one-time bandit queen and now a member of the parliament, faced the gun possibly for the first time since giving up her old wild ways, when three young men robbed her of her handbag in a Delhi neighbourhood.
The Samajwadi Party MP, who was elected from the Mirzapur constituency of the northern Uttar Pradesh state in the recent parliamentary polls, was on her way home after a visit to a local chemist when she saw the three men involved in an altercation with another motorist in the middle of a busy road.
Her chauffeur stopped the car and blew the horn several times, urging the men to proceed and stop obstructing the traffic. But instead of moving on, they came menacingly towards her car and, pointing a gun at her, snatched her purse which contained Rs 25,000 ($581). They later fled on their motorcycles.
Phoolan Devi went home to the south Delhi neighbourhood of Chittaranjan Park and told her husband, Umed Singh, about the incident. When he wanted to go in search of the motorcyclists whose registration number she had written down, she stopped him saying, "There is no point going unarmed, the culprits had weapons."
The one-time bandit queen, on whose life story director Shekhar Kapur based his internationally acclaimed film Bandit Queen, felt embarrassed by the incident.
"If you write about it, it will be very embarrassing for me. People will laugh at me in Mirzapur," she told the Statesman daily. The MP has lodged a complaint with the police but does not expect the force to do much. "What can the police do. Crime is getting to be a social problem and the police are short-staffed," she observed.
Phoolan Devi's security guard was unfortunately not in the car when the theft took place.
(India Abroad News Service)
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