Pankaj Singh Pundir (born 17 May 1976), popularly known as Sher Singh Rana[needs IPA] or S. Rana, is an Indian politician[2] who was sentenced for the 2001 vendetta-related assassination of Indiandacoit-turned-parliamentarianPhoolan Devi.[3] In August 2014, Rana was sentenced to life imprisonment and a fine of ₹100,000 (approximately US$1,600) for Devi's assassination, as well as charges of conspiracy, after a 10-year trial.[4] He was released from jail in 2016 after the court granted him bail.[5]
Rana, along with two other men, murdered Phoolan Devi outside her home in New Delhi in July 2001. At the time of her assassination, ex-dacoit Phoolan Devi was a sitting Member of Parliament in the 13th Lok Sabha.[8] Rana claims he was motivated to take revenge upon her for her actions as a leader of a bandit gang that acted primarily against the higher castes in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Rana was arrested and confessed to the murder.[9][10]
Escape from jail and rearrest
Rana re-escaped from Tihar jail, a high-security prison facility in Delhi, on 17 February 2004 with the help of his friend Sandeep, who in the guise of a policeman pretended to take Rana to a Haridwar court.[11] He went to Moradabad and checked into a hotel. He then contacted relatives who sent him ₹1 lakh through Sandeep. From Ranchi he applied for a passport in the name of Sanjay Gupta.[12]
During the two-month wait for the passport, he visited Gaya and Benaras, where he met his "financer" Subhash Thakur, who was then lodged in a local jail. Rana then went to Kolkata, where he obtained a three-month Bangladesh visa.[13] Rana claimed that he took a house for rent at Khulna and lived there, posing as Sanjay. After he fled to Bangladesh, he bought a satellite phone for ₹16,500 so that he could contact his relatives and friends without being tracked.[14] Throughout his journey — from Moradabad to Ranchi, Kolkata, Bangladesh and Dubai and later to Afghanistan from where he is said to have brought back the ashes of the Rajput king Prithviraj Chauhan.[15]
He kept getting about ₹15,000 to ₹20,000 per month as personal expense allegedly from the accomplices of an Uttar Pradesh-based criminal Subhash Thakur. He visited Kolkata often to get his visa extended. At times, he did this in Dhaka.[16]
On 25 April 2006 he was re-arrested from Kolkata by SIT, who tracked him down by his subscription to a Hindi newspaper, one of the few people in the Dharmatala area who did so.[17][18]
Release
A trial court in January 2012 allowed Sher Singh Rana, to file his nomination papers from Tihar to contest Uttar Pradesh assembly election.[19] The Delhi High Court has granted bail to Sher Singh Rana and he was released on 24 October 2016.[20]
