the river being ignorant of their intentions. The Sena members also raped 5 girls who were less than 15 years old. In states like Uttar Pradesh too, the brutal force of repression upon lower caste was inflicted by the members of upper castes, which were many a times challenged by the iconic people from the lower castes as for example Phoolan Devi, who being born in a Mallah family faced all sort of discrimination from the upper caste dominated administration after being raped by bandits belonging to Thakur Rajput castes and finally ended up perpetrating the infamous "Behmai massacre", in which male members of a Thakur caste dominated village were assassinated by a gang of Mallah under the leadership of Phoolan Devi . Devi was later inducted as Member of Parliament from Uttar Pradesh by Mulayam Singh Yadav, who acknowledged her popularity among her castemen . The Mallah and their subcastes called Bind were also active in high value organised crime in the Bihar during 1990s. These organised crimes were kidnapping, Timber logging, forcibly taking contract for public works, automobile theft and smuggling which were the prerogative of the criminals belonging to upper castes earlier as they required linkage with the politicians and backup from the ruling regime as high capital inflow is involved. In the regime of Rashtriya Janata Dal led government these criminals from backward castes specially Mallah and Yadav turned several areas of Bihar into their base and organised high value crimes . The criminal nature of Mallah were earlier used by British colonialists too to list them in Criminal Tribes Act 1871 . Scholars like Buchanan and Crooke also consider this behaviour to be inherent in their nature which halted their attempts to sanskritize and seek high status. Post 2000 The period before 2000 saw consolidation of backward castes under Lalu Prasad Yadav , who according to the backward communities gave voice to them to stand up in front of upper castes. Lalu as a Chief Minister frequently visited the SC hamlets of the state and sensitise the lower caste feeling against repression . This period saw representation of many lower caste including Mallah in local level politics who now acquired the post of "Mukhia" (village headman) at many places . The early part of Lalu Yadav's rule saw the rise to prominence of the leaders of the lower castes among which Jai Narain Prasad Nishad