Subject of award-winning film is assassinated

Phoolan Devi, the subject of director Shekhar Kapur‘s critically acclaimed 1994 film Bandit Queen, was assassinated outside her Delhi home Wednesday. Devi, a kind of female Robin Hood, had served time in prison for robbery from 1983 to 1994 and eventually became a member of the Indian parliament. Police said that she had just arrived home from parliament when three masked men jumped out of a car and began firing. In an interview with the London Times, Kapur, who won India’s Filmfare award for best director in 1995 for Bandit Queen (and went on to direct 1998’s Elizabeth), commented: “Just when it seemed she was finally getting her life together — although no one who has been through the kind of things she has lived through can ever have a normal life — it is sad that somebody has come and taken it away.”