Phoolan Devi frantic to avoid arrest
Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow
Phoolan Devi is likely to be arrested soon, a fate
India's bandit queen and Samajwadi Party member
of Parliament is desperately trying to avoid.
Having lost a long legal battle in the Supreme Court, Phoolan
Devi has been served with
a non-bailable warrant by the trial court in Kanpur where
as many as 55 criminal cases are still pending against her.
Phoolan Devi earned international attention when
her gang allegedly gunned down 20 upper caste thakurs
in Behmai village in Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur district on February 14,
1981. She eventually surrendered before the then Madhya Pradesh
chief minister Arjun Singh in 1983. After spending nine years
in Gwalior jail, she was shifted to Delhi's Tihar jail in 1992.
Two years later, her political career began, thanks to Mulayam
Singh Yadav, then UP chief minister. Yadav, currently India's
defence minister, withdrew all criminal cases
registered against Phoolan Devi. Thereafter, she was formally inducted
into Yadav's Samajwadi Party which fielded her successfully as its
nominee for the Bhadohi parliamentary seat in the 1996 general election.
However, Yadav's decision to withdraw all cases against Phoolan Devi
was challenged by V N S Sengar. The Kanpur lawyer took
the battle up to the Supreme Court which did not interfere
with the orders of both the trial court and Allahabad
high court, quashing Yadav's decision to withdraw the cases.
Consequently, Sengar approached the trial court for issuing an
arrest warrant. The warrant, issued on Tuesday, January 21, had not yet
been served on Phoolan Devi as
the court records still mention her place
of residence as Gurhan ka purva in the
adjoining district of Jalaun, which she abandoned nearly 15
years ago.
Sengar told Rediff On The NeT that he had submitted an
affidavit to the court to make the necessary correction
in her address. "Now it will be the duty of the state police to serve
the warrant on her," he said.
But UP is under central rule, where
Phoolan Devi's Samajwadi Party is among the constituents of the
ruling United Front, so Sengar does "suspect some undue influence
on the police."
"I am not giving up," the lawyer says, "and if the police fails to arrest her within
48 hours of the issue of the warrant with the revised address,
I will be compelled to file a contempt petition against the police."
Phoolan Devi has been virtually on the run since the warrant was
issued this week, hopping from one place to the other in UP. The manner
in which she has been avoiding all and sundry indicates
how desperately she is trying to avoid arrest. While someone at her Delhi
home stated that she had gone to Lucknow -- where there was
no trace of her --- some reports said she was spotted in Etawah, where
she had gone to meet mentor Mulayam Singh.
Subsequently, she is believed to have
moved to an unknown destination in her parliamentary constituency.
Her counsel, Kanpur's leading criminal lawyer Nand Lal Jaiswal,
maintained a brave front. "Who says we have lost the battle?" he asked.
"How do you know we will not be able to save her?"
According to him, the UP police cannot arrest Phoolan Devi
until January 31 when the special leave petition her lawyer has filed
on her behalf comes up before the Supreme Court.
Special Trial Court Judge S K Srivastava, while issuing the
non-bailable warrant, had ordered that Phoolan Deevi be brought
to his court on February 4.
Criminologists in Lucknow are of the view that Phoolan
Devi will first try to avoid arrest
and look for some relief on January 31, failing which, she would
be left with no choice but to surrender before the trial court
on February 4.
Over the years, Phoolan Devi has evaded as many as 130
warrants for appearing before the trial
court, as the Madhya Pradesh government first under Bharatiya Janata Party chief minister
Sunderlal Patwa and then under Congress chief minister Arjun Singh, and UP
governments both under the BJP's Kalyan Singh and
Mulayam Singh did not care to co-operate with the court.
Advocate Sengar proposes to move a separate contempt of court
petition against Patwa, Arjun Singh, Kalyan Singh and Yadav in this regard.
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