Later in 1994, she dictated her autobigraphy I, Phoolan Devi which was published first in French in 1996 and then in other languages, including English, Japanese and Malay. Freedom must look good on Geeta, because now other women are asking for her “expertise,” making her an unwitting consultant for husband disposal. But I cannot ignore the attempts at presenting a poor, pathetic, ugly, dirty India with Indians who can’t think beyond caste and religion.

I wrote this novel in 2020 and its pages were a cozy bolt-hole in the grim pandemic days where I, like so many of us, deeply missed my friends. Dressed in a police uniform and wearing a red bandanna on her head, she bowed before representations of Durga and Gandhi, then prostrated herself in front of Arjun Singh, Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, with 8,000 people watching.Parini Shroff's splendid The Bandit Queens is a hilarious romp about serious things—as serious as a novel gets, and as funny, too, with characters who are dear and maddening and indelible and gorgeously drawn. Angry and hopeless, Phoolan goes to the local police to try to have her ban lifted, but she is beaten, molested, and arrested by the police, who rapes her while in custody.

Phoolan Devi's worldwide fame grew after the release of the controversial 1994 film Bandit Queen, which told her life story in a way she did not approve of. Reading "India's Bandit Queen": A trans/national feminist perspective on the discrepancies of representation". I loved watching Geeta’s confidence build as she sought to improve not just her own lot in life, but that of other women. This act of vengeance brings her to the attention of the national law enforcement authorities (in New Delhi). Readers see systematic violence, but they also build relationships with the novel's characters ad they build relationships of one another.

At our book club discussion we had lots of tangents where someone just said “remember when Saloni said such-and-such” or “oh my gosh that scene at the police station!

Although Gujjar's lieutenant Vikram is sympathetic towards Phoolan, Gujjar indiscriminately brutalizes and humiliates her, until one day Vikram catches him raping her and shoots him in the head. The Behmai massacre led Thakur farmers to pressure Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to impose the rule of law. Phoolan Devi was charged in absentia for the 1981 Behmai massacre, in which twenty Thakur men were executed, allegedly on her command. Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Ballantine Books. After her release from prison, she joined the Samajwadi Party and in the 1996 general election took a seat in the Indian lower legislative body, the Lok Sabha, as a member of parliament (MP) for Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh.Unable to convince the others that she did not kill him and dispose of his body, she seizes on their suspicions. Geeta tries to let her know the truth but no one believes her, she starts getting blackmailed and threatened into committing murder, what will Geeta do? When Phoolan Devi threw stones at him and wounded his face, she was arrested by the local police and detained for one month. There are child molesters, crooked police, thugs, caste ostracization, animal abuse, an acceptance of domestic abuse, and gender inequality. After being abused by her husband for several years, she managed to escape him and fall into the company of a gang of bandits.