Gwalior, July 26 :    Gwalior, July 26:  When truckloads of armymen dropped by at Gwalior Central Jail one afternoon to see the daring young woman whose picture was splashed in magazines - rifle in hand and a red band tied around her head - the other dacoits, all men, were jealous. Malkhan Singh, Ghanshyam Baba and Ramesh Shikharmar were also housed in the jail. Malkhan, who led a gang of 120 men in Chambal, was more than 20 years older and led a bigger gang, armed with the most sophisticated weapons of the time. But children queued up outside the jail's main gate for one glimpse of the 'mahila dacoit'. Families of bureaucrats, armymen and government officers took special permission to see the bandit queen. A jealous Malkhan shouted himself hoarse: 'Ha, ha. She, a dacoit? That girl can't even hold a gun straight.' The Gwalior jail was where Phoolan spent 10 years and 8 months from February 1983 to October 1993. According to jail records, Phoolan Devi, aged 22, daughter of Devidin, caste Mallah, resident of Sheikhpura, police station Kalpi, district Jalaun (Uttar Pradesh), was a surrendered dacoit booked as an undertrial under Section 171 of the Indian Penal Code. Madhya Pradesh had three criminal cases against her and Uttar Pradesh 49. 'At first she was uncontrollable,' recounts Chandra Kumari Shukla, a jail matron who had the job of handling the 'daku rani'. 'She was no pretty girl. She was thin and dark. She coughed, threw up everything she ate and was very sickly.' In the first couple of years, Phoolan 'abused everybody who came to see her. Everyone. She never fought with female inmates. Her quarrel was with the big men. Malkhan was her favourite,' Chandra Kumari said. On April 16, 1983, Phoolan was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for violence in jail. Four months later, she was taken to Jay Arogya Hospital for uterus problems. She was operated upon on August 30, 1983. Two years later, Phoolan was a changed person. She stopped abusing and 'became a good human being'. On April 9, 1985, surrendered dacoit Man Singh announced that Phoolan and he were in love. 'Humne gandharv vivah kar liya,' Man declared. They filed an affidavit with the notary and for one year from April 9, 1985, after a registration within the jail premises, the two were allowed to live as husband and wife. Till date, the other inmates have not forgotten this. 'I came here a year before she did. I am still here while she went out, fought elections, got married. Everyone loved her because she was the woman dacoit. She romanced, married and lived with Man Singh inside the jail and we were not even allowed to see our wives and children for more than 10 minutes,' Ashok Sharma, a surrendered dacoit of the Ramesh Shikharmar gang, said bitterly today. But Phoolan never got what she most wanted - to be a mother. 'She was great friends with my children. I had no one to take care of the children at home so I got them here and Phoolan would bathe and feed my Rakhi and Bipul,' recalled Chandra Kumari. 'She would be emotional when she saw children.' While men envied the bandit queen her stardom, she felt she never knew happiness. 'My whole life will pass away in pain. I was married off when I was 11 to a man three times my age. When I went to my mother's house, dacoits took me away and tortured me. I became a baaghi and now I am in jail,' she would say.