The slaying of India's "bandit queen" Phoolan Devi was greeted with undisguised joy and a sense of divine justice in the remote village of Behmai.
Many here still have clear memories of Valentine's Day, 1981, when a teenaged Devi allegedly led her outlaw gang in the killing of 22 upper-caste Hindus who she said had kidnapped and gang raped her.
Although Devi was subsequently jailed for 11 years, she always denied any personal role in the massacre and was never actually tried in court.
Her later elevation to the status of a female Robin Hood -- partly through the 1996 Shekhar Kapur movie "Bandit Queen" -- has always been a source of bitter resentment for the villagers of Behmai.
"What the courts could not decide, God finally saw to. She should have been hanged a long time back," said Ajay Pal Singh, whose father was one of the men dragged out of their homes and shot dead by Devi's gang.
"At last the souls of those men have attained peace," Singh said, a day after Devi was shot dead by three masked men outside her residence in New Delhi -- BEHMAI, India (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
