NEW DELHI, 28 July — Indian police said yesterday they had secured a confession after arresting one of the main suspects in the murder of “Bandit Queen” Phoolan Devi.
Sher Singh Rana, who was arrested in the northern city of Dehradun, was suspected of driving the car used by the gunmen who shot Devi outside her house in a high-security residential area of New Delhi on Wednesday. “He himself walked into the police station and surrendered,” joint commissioner of police K.K. Paul said. “He has confessed to the murder,” Paul said.
Star TV quoted Dehradun police as saying Rana had cited revenge for Devi’s alleged massacre of 22 high-caste Hindus in the village of Behmai in 1981 as the motive for the killing. “I am proud of what I have done. It has been in my mind for quite some time,” Press Trust of India news agency quoted Rana as saying. Rana said he shot Devi minutes after she alighted from a car at her residence.
Devi was gunned down in broad daylight outside her official Delhi residence after returning from the morning session of parliament. She was 38. The gunmen escaped in a Maruti car which they later abandoned a kilometer away when they switched to an autorickshaw.
Rana, who went under the alias Pankaj Kalra, said he and a cousin were responsible for Wednesday’s killing. Police in Delhi said Rana’s claim contradicted eyewitness reports which said she was killed by three assassins.
The autorickshaw driver had been traced and he told police that one of the three men got off within half a kilometer of the murder site while the other two got off some distance away.
Police have, however, not ruled out the possibility of involvement of other people in Devi’s murder. One suspect is Umed Singh, Devi’s husband. According to newspaper reports, Devi had recently sought the help of Supreme Court lawyer Kamini Jaiswal in writing her will. Umed Singh was to be left out of her will, the papers said.
