Kushma

Kanpur, June 9: She couldn’t stand Phoolan Devi because she believed the original bandit queen’s boyfriend had set police on her first love. But when remixed bandit queen Kushma Nain gave herself up last evening latest love in tow, her namaste looked almost a xerox of her enemy’s surrender gesture 20 long years ago.

Yellow vermilion on her forehead and palms joined in a namaste, 52-year Kushma broke into song as she and paramour-mentor Fakkad Baba surrendered before the police in Rawatpura temple, deep in the interiors of the notorious Chambal ravines that have thrown up bandit queen after bandit queen.

The drama began with Kushma — in blue shirt, trousers, scarf and trademark white nose ring — and her six-footer lover marching to the temple in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhind district along with eight gang members. Prayers and purification done, they filed up before the police, giving up a Webley Scott revolver, three semi-automatic rifles and other arms and themselves.

Then Kushma set about playing to the crowd that had gathered to watch the curious ceremony. “Dukh aur chot agar khai na hoti (Had I not been deeply hurt by life’s cruel twists)…” she sang, harking back to the lost love and trying to explain why she had picked this unusual way of life.

Whatever the compulsions, after several years in the ravines she was fed up, Kushma said, her eyes tired and long hair unkempt and dusty. That was why she and her companions had decided to bid a farewell to arms.

Fakkad Baba added: “We were forced by a particular social condition to resort to arms. Now I want to get back to the mainstream and spend my last days offering prayers and leading an uneventful life.”

Kushma’s tryst with Phoolan Devi began in the days the latter was the reigning bandit queen of Chambal. Kushma apparently belonged to a well-to-do family in Kanpur but had fallen in love with Madho Singh, the first cousin of Phoolan Devi’s lover Vikram Mallar.

When Kushma’s parents arranged her marriage elsewhere, she eloped with Madho Singh. But he was arrested soon after and bumped off in a fake encounter.

“Kushma was always under the impression that Madho’s whereabouts were leaked to the police by Vikram. After that, Phoolan Devi and Kushma fell out. Kushma had even taken the side of the Thakur gang (of the Behmai massacre days) and later became its leader. When later Vikram was killed, Kushma had rejoiced,” a police officer said.

Kushma is even reported to have kicked Phoolan Devi when she was in the custody of the Thakurs shortly before the Behmai massacre. After Phoolan avenged her gangrape by the Thakurs by gunning them down, Kushma is believed to have massacred 11 Mallars, the caste Phoolan Devi belonged to.

When Kushma joined the gang of Thakur dacoits, one Sri Ram had taken her under his wing. She became Fakkad Baba’s mistress after his death.

Kushma and her gang are wanted in almost 250 cases, most of them in Etawah, Kanpur, Jalone and Fatehpur districts of Uttar Pradesh. The gang members — the most notorious being Santosh Dubey, Ram Chandra Vajpayee and Bhure Singh — are from that state. They had been negotiating surrender terms with Uttar Pradesh police for almost a decade but could not strike a deal.

Bhind superintendent of police Sajid Farid said yesterday’s surrender would usher in relative peace in the Chambal ravines for a while. “The surrender was unconditional,” he said.