Today women all over the the world are celebrating International Women’s Day. Well here at The SkinNYC we are celebrating Women’s History Month. For 26 days we will be celebrating the accomplishments of powerful women in history and in our society. Today we’ll be kicking off our celebration with an Outlaw Hero by the name of Phoolan Devi. She was an Indian women that was born into a low caste in a small village in Utter Pradesh on August 10,1963. She lived a life of pain and suffering. She had been gang raped and abused multiple times throughout her life starting at a very young age. She witnessed her husbands brutal murder by a group of bandits and was later taken to their village to be beaten and raped. Devi escaped the village and led a group of Indian bandits, dacoits, to search for the murders. She became known as the ‘Bandit Queen’. She returned to the village with her gang of dacoits and demanded the villagers to reveal the murderers’ identity. When they refused, her and her gang reeked havoc on the village. After months of being chased by the police, Phoolan eventually was forced to surrender due to poor health and served a prison sentence of almost two decades. After being released from prison, Devi became a member of Parliament. She served as voice for the poor and suppressed. She was later assassinated July 25, 2001.
