Bandit Queen is a 1994 Indian Hindi-language biographical action-adventure film[3] based on the life of Phoolan Devi as covered in the book India's Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi by the Indian author Mala Sen.[4] It was directed by Shekhar Kapur and starred Seema Biswas as the title character.

As Phoolan grows older, she faces incidents of (non-consensual) fondling and groping from the Thakur men (whose parents make up the panchayat or village government).

At the next town meeting, the panchayat wields their patriarchal authority to banish Phoolan from the village, since she will not consent to the sexual advances of the higher caste males.

En route to another village, she encounters a troop of dakus (bandits) of the Babu Gujjar gang, led by Vikram Mallah Mastana (Nirmal Pandey).

Angry and hopeless, Phoolan goes to the local police to try to have her ban lifted, but she is beaten, molested, and arrested by policemen, who rape her in custody.

Around this time, Phoolan revisits her former husband Puttilal, and with Vikram's help, abducts him and exacts her justice for his rape and abuse, beating him up.

Phoolan is repeatedly raped and beaten by Shri Ram and by the rest of the gang members, as punishment for her "disrespect" for his previous advances, and for her audacity at being equal.

The final humiliation and punishment is that she is stripped naked, paraded around Behmai, beaten, and sent to fetch water from the well (in full view of the village).

The top police officials now begin a massive manhunt for Phoolan, and Thakur Shri Ram relishes the opportunity to come to their aid.

The website's critics consensus reads, "Brimming with bravura spectacle and an arresting turn by Seema Biswas, The Bandit Queen is a galvanizing ode to rebellion.

"[15] Jonathan Rosenbaum called it "an eye-filling and often stirring movie", writing that at "its best, this recalls radical third-world 'westerns' like Glauber Rocha's Antonio das mortes as well as Kenji Mizoguchi's films about men's inhumanity to women."

He writes, however, that the film "despite its ambition, bracing anger, and visual panache ... remains many notches below such reference points because of its sensationalistic and fairly indiscriminate piling on of horrors and violence, which ultimately becomes pornographic.

"[16] James Berardinelli gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, writing that the "picture of human indignity and suffering painted by Bandit Queen is on par with that of Schindler's List.

As the Nazis treated the Jews like animals, so too do the upper caste Indians regard those born into poverty and squalor."

[18] This lack of objectivity is countered by Richard Corliss, who called it an "exciting movie that brings Devi's story to life with passion but without passing judgment.