4. Phoolan Devi
Widely known and acclaimed as the ‘Bandit Queen of India’, she later on became a politician. Phoolan Devi was forced to become a moll of the leader of a group of bandits by her ill-fated adolescence, and later was brutally gang raped by the members of the group, when the leader was killed.
To avenge her life and her past, she became a bandit, in order to prove her mettle and attain peace through bloodshed. She came into lime light by the Behmai Massacres, wherein she killed 22 upper caste Hindus.
It is believed that the woes of her life started just because she was a low caste Hindu. While the agricultural lands that their family owned were illegally and forcibly taken from them, poverty led the family to hunger and pain. Add to it, the woes of being forcibly married to a man who was old, almost dead!
Phoolan tried to run away from all this, but the society pushed her deeper into the darkness every time. Eventually, the brutal gang rape was the turning point, where she found her inner strength and decided to retaliate, going after every single person, who had betrayed her and pained her.
