40 OUTLOOK 29 July 2019
M
EN sit on striped durries, sipping
cold drink in disposable glasses, at
the community hall of Bond village
in Haryana’s Bhiwani district.
Addressing the gathering is Sher
Singh Rana, who was convicted of the 2001
murder of bandit-turned-politician
Phoolan Devi. Rana was granted bail by
the Delhi High Court in 2016 and has been
participating in what he calls “social
activities” since then. In a starched yellow
kurta at the Bond gathering, he talks of
unity between Hindu and Muslim Rajputs
under a Rajput political banner, and about
leveraging the political clout to help youth
from the community find jobs.
With eyes on the assembly polls in
Haryana later this year, he has started a 50-
day tour called Rashtrawadi Janlok
Parivartan Yatra to drum up support for
demands such as capital punishment for
rape of a girl below 12 years, securing of
pastures, a farmers’ commission, and a law
that promises a job to one person in each
household. He wants to be remembered as
somebody who got jobs for lakhs of people.
“I was framed, but I believe justice shall
prevail and I’ll be acquitted,” says Rana,
though he was introduced to the gatheringas the one who avenged the killing of 22
Rajputs by Phoolan Devi, who had in 1981
avenged her gang-rape by Rajput men of
Behmai village. “Whoever killed her did the
right thing. I would have stood by her if she
had killed those actually responsible for
assaulting her, but she killed innocent men
of the village,” adds Rana.
Staying away from his family for over 15
years was tough, and property worth crores
was sold to pay the lawyers, says Rana, who
was in Afghanistan and whose two brothers
were in jail when their father passed away
in 2004. None of the sons could light the
father’s pyre. An alumnus of Saint Gabriel
Academy in Roorkee, Rana aspired to be an
army officer—“but then I realised I had to
do bigger things,” he adds. Arrested first in
2001, he escaped from Delhi’s Tihar jail in
2004, and travelled to Bangladesh, Dubai
and Afghanistan. In 2006, he was
rearrested in Calcutta. He has written
about these experiences in his Jail Diary:
From Tihar to Kabul-Kandahar and claims
a biopic is in the works and would be
announced soon. Rana got married in
February last year and has a seven- month-
old daughter. O
Salik Ahmad in Bhiwani“Whoever
killed her
( Phoolan
Devi) did the
right thing....
I was framed,
but I believe
I will be
acquitted,”
says Rana.‘I want to be remembered
as somebody who got jobs
for lakhs of people’
Sher Singh Rana
Phoolan Devi’s killerCOVER STORY
PTISURESH K. PANDEY