She was a woman of the Mallah subcaste who grew up in poverty in a village in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where her family was on the losing side of a land dispute which caused them many problems.

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.

Phoolan Devi was born on 10 August 1963, in the village of Gorha Ka Purwa in Jalaun district, Uttar Pradesh, India.

[B][2]: 57 [7] Phoolan Devi and her sisters made dung cakes to burn as fuel, as is common practice in the region; her family grew chickpeas, sunflowers and pearl millet.

According to the version related by her to her biographer Mala Sen, it was agreed that Phoolan Devi would start living with him after three years, but Puttilal came back within three months and took her away.

[2]: 45–46 [12] For a wife to leave her husband was scandalous; preying on Phoolan Devi's parents' fears of disgrace, Maiyadin offered to ensure that Puttilal took her back if they signed a document.

Phoolan Devi was sent to stay with a distant relative in the village of Teoga, where she met her recently married cousin Kailash, who ran errands for dacoits (also known locally as bahghis).

[2]: 46–48 [10][13] Once Phoolan Devi was back in Gorha Ka Purwa, the second son of the village leader became infatuated with her and when she did not reciprocate his affections, he attacked her.

[10] Mala Sen asked her if she had been raped at the police station and Phoolan Devi replied: "They had plenty of fun at my expense and beat the hell out of me too.

[15] In July 1979, a gang of bandits led by Babu Gujjar kidnapped Phoolan Devi from her family's home, for reasons she explained in multiple ways.

[2]: 99  As news of Phoolan Devi's exploits spread, she became popular with the lower castes, who called her Dasyu Sundari (Beautiful Bandit) and celebrated her as a Robin Hood figure, who robbed from the rich to give to the poor.

[8] In 1983, Phoolan Devi surrendered to the authorities after long negotiations led by Rajendra Chaturvedi, a police officer from Bhind who gained the trust of local dacoits after arresting Malkhan Singh Rajpoot.

Dressed in a police uniform and wearing a red bandanna on her head, she bowed before representations of the goddess Durga and Mahatma Gandhi, then prostrated herself in front of Arjun Singh, the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, with approximately 8,000 people watching.

[7] The others, including Man Singh, agreed to trials in Uttar Pradesh and were all acquitted, but Phoolan Devi refused to make a deal and remained convinced she would be murdered if she went there.

[10] Charges against Phoolan Devi were dropped in 1994 by order of Mulayam Singh Yadav, the leader of the Samajwadi Party and Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.

[30] 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 the Member of Parliament (MP) for Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh.

[7][34][35] Phoolan Devi married Umed Singh in 1994; they appeared together in a film, called Sholay Aur Chingari (Blazing Fires and Sparks).

[37] The 1994 film Bandit Queen was loosely based on Mala Sen's biography; it was directed by Shekhar Kapur and starred Seema Biswas as Phoolan Devi.

[2]: 254 [10] She was supported by the feminist and novelist Arundhati Roy, who wrote a critique of the film (entitled "The great Indian rape trick"), arguing that whilst Sen's book presented a complex story with different perspectives, Kapur portrayed Phoolan Devi as a victim without having met her.

[13] In his 2021 autobiography Farrukh Dhondy, the former commissioning editor at Channel 4, described how he rushed to Delhi in order to enlist Umed Singh's aid in persuading Phoolan Devi to drop her complaint.

[40] Umed Singh commented "No one likes it when someone, especially a woman, from the lower classes rises and makes a name for herself" and her lawyer Kamini Jaiswal stated "This murder is the result of caste conflict.

[46] Two years later, he appealed his sentence to the Delhi High Court and was set free by Justice Gita Mittal on a personal bond of ₹50,000 (equivalent to ₹72,000 or £750 in 2023) and two sureties, each of the same amount.

He was required to not interact with Phoolan Devi's family and to report to the police every six months, whilst also informing them where he stayed and what mobile telephone number he was using.

[51] Phoolan Devi's fame throughout India continued to grow after her death and the controversy surrounding the Bandit Queen film had already ensured that she was globally famous.

[23][21] Her life has inspired biographies by Roy Moxham, Mala Sen and Richard Shears and Isobelle Gidley, as well as novels by Irène Frain and Dimitri Friedman.

[53] The scholar Tatiana Szurlej notes that the facts presented in these biographies often contradict each other despite coming from interviews with Phoolan Devi herself and questions whether she forgot elements or adapted her account to suit her changing circumstances.

[2]: 254 [13][56] In 2022, Farrukh Dhondy announced that he was making a web series about her life told from the perspective of Rajendra Chaturvedi, the person who arranged her surrender.

[58] Shirish Korde and Lynn Kremer wrote an opera called Phoolan Devi: The Bandit Queen which premiered in 2010 at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, US.

[66][67] Mukesh Sahani, the leader of the VIP, was prevented from leaving Varanasi airport by the Government of Uttar Pradesh when he wanted to install a statue.

[67][68] Also in 2021, tributes marking the anniversary of her death were made by Chirag Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) and Tejashwi Yadav of Rashtriya Janata Dal.