The day Phoolan Devi and gang shot 20 men dead in a UP village

Behmai village in Kanpur where 20 people were killed on February 14, 1981. (File/Gajendra Yadav)

Of the 35 accused, most of them from villages neighbouring Behmai, 30 are dead — either killed in police encounters or passed away due to natural causes. Phoolan surrendered before the Madhya Pradesh Police in 1983 under an amnesty scheme.

However, little has changed in Behmai since that February evening four decades ago. The road the dacoits took that day is still the same, undulating and dusty, with a constant view of the imposing ravines.

Seated outside his thatched-roof house on a plastic chair is Bal Mukund. His elder brother Rajaram Singh is the complainant and prime witness in the case — Rajaram passed away in December 2020. “Forget justice, we don’t even have development. For over four decades, journalists, filmmakers and even politicians have visited us to talk about the incident, but Behmai still has the same kuccha road that was used by the dacoits that day. The village is pitch dark after sundown even now because of the irregular power supply. The nearest government hospital is over 10 km away,” he says.

The thatched roof of his house and the fact that very few houses in the village have concrete roofs confirm his frustration. Even the village’s proximity to Kanpur, one of Uttar Pradesh’s biggest cities, has not sent any development Behmai’s way.

The Behmai massacre

“Dakait, dakait,” a few villagers had screamed, wildly rattling several doors in Behmai that February afternoon, recalls Radhey Shyam, now in his 60s.

“Everyone hid. Initially, we were confused. The people who had come to the village were dressed in the uniform worn by the platoon from the anti-dacoit police force, which patrolled the area regularly. It was only after a few of us identified two or three men as dacoits did the others realise that the warning was real,” says Radhey, sitting on a cot in the winter son.

Villagers claim the gang, with Phoolan and her gang member Mustakeem leading the group, had arrived in the village through the Yamuna. They then split into three groups and surrounded the village completely.

A memorial has been built by the locals at the spot where the massacre took place in Behmai village. A white plaque lists the names and ages of all the victims. File/Gajendra Yadav

Wakeel Singh, 85, who sustained pellet injuries in the firing that day, recalls, “Homes were ransacked and men were forcefully pulled out from their houses and other hiding spots. We did not know why we were being attacked.”

His court statement says the men were taken to a nearby well, where they were told to kneel down and raise their hands. After allegedly spewing curses, the gang opened fire — 20 men lay dead.

An FIR was lodged against Phoolan, her associates Lallu, Mustaqeem and Ramavtar Singh. Of the 35 accused in the case, 10, including Lallu and Mustaqeem, were killed in police encounters. Only five of all accused — Shyam, Ramavtar, Phosha, Bhikha and the juvenile — ever saw the inside of a courtroom. While Ramavtar, Phosha and Bhikha died during the trial, defence lawyer Girish Narayan Dubey said others, including Phoolan, were never tried. Three of the accused — Man Singh, Ram Ratan and Vishwanath alias Ashok — are yet to be caught.

Shyam Babu, the only person to be convicted in the case, was taken into custody immediately after the judge delivered the February 14 verdict. He is now lodged at the Kanpur Dehat jail.

Speaking on the phone, Shyam’s grandson Sonu Nishad says, “We will file an appeal. Neither was my grandfather named in the FIR, nor was he identified during the witness identification parade. Our house is in Auriaya, around 70 km from Behmai. Both my grandfather and father are daily-wage labourers.”

The backstory

Wakeel Singh, the villager who was among those injured in the Behmai attack, says no one knows for certain what the provocation was, but theories abound. While families of the victims claimed Phoolan’s gang came to Behmai in search of Lalaram Singh and his brother Sriram Singh — members of a rival Rajput gang — who had allegedly killed dacoit Vikram Mallah, Phoolan Devi’s ‘lover’, the defence argued the killings were revenge for Phoolan’s alleged gangrape in Behmai.

(From left) The verdict after 43 years has not brought peace or joy to massacre survivors like Wakeel Singh, 85, or the kin of victims like Takhat Singh, 89, and Bal Mukund Singh, 77. Manish Sahu

Police say Phoolan, Mustakeem and the Singh brothers were earlier part of Vikram Mallah’s gang. With Phoolan and Vikram — both members of the backward Mallah community — working in tandem, allegedly ransacking upper-caste homes and carrying out a series of kidnappings and murders, the gang began to be called the ‘Vikram-Phoolan gang’. But internal conflicts brewed.

Late on August 12, 1980, Lalaram and Sriram murdered Vikram at Baijamau village, about 6 km from Behmai, and Lalaram is said to have declared himself the leader of the gang. According to news reports of that time, the police too claimed credit for Vikram’s death in an “encounter”.

Residents of the neighbouring Pal village, home to accused Posa, Bhika and Ramavtar, allege that Lalaram abducted Phoolan after Vikram’s death and took her to a wooded area near Behmai village, where she was allegedly tortured and gangraped for days before she managed to escape — a version that Behmai residents deny.

With help from Mustaqeem, villagers in Behmai claim, Phoolan established a gang that included people from her own community. They claim Phoolan descended on their village after she was told that Lalaram and Sriram had taken shelter in Behmai, a predominantly Rajput village that’s 5 km from their village.

“Phoolan came to Behmai that day with her gang in search of the dacoit brothers. Someone had tipped her off, claiming that we were giving shelter to Lalaram, Sriram and their entire gang,” says Prahlad Singh, 68, a local resident.

“After gathering the locals, Phoolan kept asking them about their (Lalaram and Sriram) whereabouts. She suspected that the brothers and their gang had fled Behmai after they were alerted by the villagers. Incensed, Phoolan and her gang killed our men,” says another villager.

Villagers also claim that Phoolan suspected that someone in Behmai was passing on information about her gang to the police. “Phoolan was never raped. That incident was fabricated to tarnish our reputation,” says one of them.

Dacoit brothers Lalaram and Sriram Singh died long after Phoolan surrendered — while Lalram died in a police encounter around 2000, Sriram died earlier. As for her, she was released from Gwalior jail in 1994 without a trial. After then UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav withdrew all criminal cases, including the Behmai case, against her “in public interest”, she went on to become a Lok Sabha member from Mirzapur on a Samajwadi Party ticket. She was eventually shot dead outside her Delhi residence on July 25, 2001.

Metres away from Behmai is the home of the accused who was in 2016 declared a juvenile and now stands acquitted in the case. “I was in Class 10 when the incident happened. Despite repeatedly saying I was innocent and that they had mistaken me for my neighbour (who has the same name), no one listened to me,” he claims, adding that he was in jail for nearly five months after the incident before he got bail.

Now a father of seven, he says, “I lost almost everything in my struggle to clear my name, including my ancestral land. Just two weeks ago, my wife passed away. My acquittal would have made her extremely happy.”