By joining politics, dreaded dacoit Seema Parihar seems to be following in Phoolan Devi’s footsteps
NEW DELHI: Clad in stone-washed jeans and a high-collar shirt, Seema Parihar comes across as a busy, enterprising woman. Her new avatar as a politician is a perfect foil to her earlier role as an infamous dacoit of the Chambal ravines. “I started using the gun at a very young age. From 303, SLR, Semis to 303 and 315, I have used all those guns. But I gave them up a long time ago. Now I am interested in dedicating myself to politics. I will work for my party and not essentially fight elections,” she explains while fiddling with three mobile phones.
Seema surrendered her arms six years ago after losing her second husband and gang leader Lalaram, and has recently joined the Indian Justice Party. Her raw rural appeal notwithstanding, she talks of procuring equal rights for the modern woman. “There are still certain sections of the society that do not encourage women to wear western clothes. I want to ask them that if they have switched over from wearing dhotis, why shouldn’t the woman change with time?”
Seema, an upper caste Thakur who was kidnapped by a rival Thakur gang at the age of 13, today talks of protecting women from getting exploited. “Look what happened to me. I know I have a negative past. But I wasn’t a dacoit by choice. Even when I married Nirbhay Gujjar, it wasn’t because I loved him. I was forced to marry him by the gang leader. I didn’t even know I was getting a reputation as a dacoit. In that community, marriage didn’t hold any meaning – the important thing was survival of the fittest. When I saw him womanising openly, I beat him up and threw him out of my gang,” she recalls with evident pride.
Her second marriage to Lalaram, she mentions was also an arrangement and with his death in 2000, she eventually lay down her arms and surrendered. “I tried telling him to surrender many times but he told me ‘it is better to die in the jungles than languish in jails’. It was easy to get into this but impossible to get out. After what I have gone through, I don’t want women to face exploitation. I strongly feel that even parents have no right to interfere. Women should be given the prerogative to decide what they want.”
