Kanpur (UP): Four decades after the sensational Behmai massacre in which 20 people were shot dead in a Kanpur village by bandit Phoolan Devi and her gang, a court here Wednesday pronounced its verdict, handing the life sentence to one of the two last surviving accused.

The anti-robbery court of Judge Amit Malviya found Shyam Babu guilty but acquitted Vishwanath due to lack of evidence, Kanpur Dehat district government advocate Raju Porwal said.

Porwal said a total of 35 people, including Phoolan Devi, were accused in the case. All of them except for Shyam Babu and Vishwanath have died, he added.

On February 14, 1981, Phoolan Devi and her gang allegedly killed 20 people in Behmai village located in the Rajpur police station area of Kanpur Dehat to avenge her rape by upper caste men. Seventeen of the dead were Thakurs.

In the years following the massacre, Phoolan Devi surrendered and became an MP. She was killed outside her official residence in New Delhi on July 25, 2001. PTI