Outlaw: India's Bandit Queen and Me - Roy Moxham

This extraordinary and true story of Phoolan Devi, India’s famous ‘Bandit Queen’, and of a friendship that transcended borders, religion and language.

Phoolan Devi was born in rural poverty in the satae of Uttar Pradesh. Married off at age of eleven, she survived years of abuse at the hands of her husband before being returned in disgrace to her family. Then a property dispute among her relatives led to her kidnap and rape by bandits.

Knowing she could never return to her village, Phoolan joined the bandits in their raids, taking money from the rich and earning support from the poor. Later, she formed a gang of her own and became a folk hero – a modern – day Robin Hood, with a price on her head, dead or alive. She negotiated a surrender deal with the police and, accused 22 murders, kidnapping and the looting of entire villagers, went to jail. From inside her prison shell she started campaigning to become an MP – a different way to help the poor.

Halfway round the world in London, her cause was taken up by an archive restorer at Canterbury Cathedral, Roy Moxham. First by letter, then in India itself, they formed an unlikely friendship. Here, Moxham gives the intriguing – but so far untold – account of Devi’s life he helped her in her transition from prison to parliament. This is an insider’s story of Phoolan Devi, outlaw, rebel and Bandit Queen.

In June 1992, author Roy Moxham did a very strange thing: he wrote to a bandit in an Indian jail. Phoolan Devi was the controversial and charismatic 'Bandit Queen' hailed as a modern-day Robin Hood in the villages surrounding Delhi. In revenge for her own gang rape, her followers killed 20 high-caste Indians, which led to her surrender and imprisonment. Struck by her story and appalled by her plight, Roy Moxham helped Phoolan Devi obtain justice, offered her encouragement when she became an MP in India on her release, and traveled with her for several years before she was finally gunned down in 2001. Based on the diaries that documented their extraordinary friendship, Moxham offers a fascinating portrait of a remarkable woman and reveals the hidden face of India.

Roy Moxham is the author of The Great Hedge of India and Tea; Addiction, Exploitation and Empire. Born Worcestershire, he became a tea planter and spend thirteen years in Eastern Africa, opened a London gallery, and trained as a book and paper conservator. Working for a time at Canterbury Cathedral’s archive, he later became Senior Conservator of the University of London Library and taught on an MA course. He lives in London.