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Devi was born into the Mallah (boatmen) caste, in the small village of Ghura Ka Purwa (also spelled Gorham ka Purwa) in Jalaun District, Uttar Pradesh. She was the fourth and youngest child of Moola and her husband Devi Din Mallah. Besides Phoolan, only one older sister survived to adulthood. Phoolan's family was poor. The major asset owned by them was around 1 acre (0.4 hectares) of farmland with a large but very old neem tree on it. When Phoolan was eleven years old, her paternal grandparents' death led to her father's elder brother's son, Maya Din Mallah, proposing to cut down the neem tree to cultivate that patch of land with more profitable crops. Phoolan's father agreed to it with mild protest. However, the teenage Phoolan was enraged and protested, publicly taunting and verbally abusing her cousin for several weeks, going on to physically assault him. She then gathered a few village girls and staged a Dharna (sit-in) on the land, and did not budge even when the family elders tried to use force to drag them home. She was eventually beaten unconscious with a brick