Phoolan Devi’skiller gets rousing welcome by Rajput community in Roorkee

ROORKEE: Sher Singh Rana, the lone convict in the sensational murder of bandit-turned-Lok Sabha member Phoolan Devi in Delhi in 2001, was given a rousing welcome on his arrival to his hometown here on Sunday evening. Rana, who was lodged in Tihar jail of Delhi for past 13 years, was granted bail by the Delhi High Court on Friday.
“Rana had to go through a long rough patch in jail. Now he has come to his hometown here after spending 13 years in Tihar prison.So jubilation among members of the Rajput community is natural,” said Uday Singh Pundir, state president of Akhil Bharatiya Kshatriya Mahasabha (ABKM). Members of ABKM welcomed him at the Rana Pratap Chowk in the city showering him with flower petals amid beats of drums and bursting of firecrackers that went on for over an hour.
“I am very happy now. I have been a victim of circumstances, otherwise I was innocent. But I have full faith in judiciary,” Rana told TOI.
Rana, who was awarded life term on August 14, 2014, was held guilty of offences under sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder) and 34 (common intention) under IPC in the case. Thirty-seven-year-old Phoolan Devi, then a Samajwadi Party lawmaker from Mirzapur constituency in Uttar Pradesh, was shot dead from a close range by three masked gunmen in front of her Ashoka Road residence in the heart of the national capital’s VIP area when she returned home for lunch after attending Lok Sabha session on July 25, 2001.
Delhi Police had chargesheeted 11 men accusing them of eliminating Phoolan Devi to avenge the 1981 Behmai massacre in which she had allegedly killed a number of Thakurs.
Rana managed to escape from Tihar Jail in 2004, but was arrested by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police at Dharamtalla in Kolkata in 2006. In a book that he penned later, Rana claimed that he visited Afghanistan to bring back remains of Hindu king Prithviraj Chauhan. Rana claimed that he brought relics from the king’s grave at Deak village in Ghazni, Afghanistan, and had a memorial built in Etawah in UP.
A trial court in January 2012 allowed Rana, to file his nomination papers from Tihar to contest UP assembly election. He lost the poll from Jewar constituency.