NEW DELHI -- A bitter family feud erupted Wednesday over the estate of India's famed "Bandit Queen" Phoolan Devi, who was gunned down in New Delhi last week, AFP reported.

Riot police had to be called in at a news conference in New Delhi where Devi's husband Umed Singh and the mother and sister of the slain outlaw-turned MP clashed over her financial legacy.

Singh, who married Devi a year after she was freed from prison in 1993, claimed to be the sole inheritor of her estate -- valued at 100 million rupees ($2.1 million).

The claim was hotly disputed by the Bandit Queen's sister Munni Devi and mother Mulla Devi.

Devi, who belonged to the opposition Samajwadi Party, was murdered outside her official MP's residence by up to three gunmen last Thursday just after she returned from a session of Parliament.

The police so far have arrested four people and identified the prime accused as Sher Singh Rana.

Umed Singh, a failed politician, told reporters at the chaotic news conference that he planned to form a trust with Devi's money to help the poor, but the MP's sister and mother said he had no legal right to handle the estate.

Munni Devi screamed at Singh and said he was an accomplice of Devi's killers and added that he could not inherit since he already had two children from a previous marriage.

"Singh was very well known to the conspirators and he had married my sister with an eye on her property," the slain MP's sister shouted, and rained curses on her stunned brother-in-law.

"He (Singh) has another wife and two daughters," she added.

Singh's estrangement with Devi was widely known, with the MP's lawyer Kamini Jaisawal claiming that she had frequently discussed divorce.

Jaisawal also said the widower would only be entitled to Devi's property if he could prove that he had legally divorced his first wife.

The family feuding coincided Wednesday with a new twist to police investigations into the murder.

Detectives in the northern state of Uttaranchal Pradesh said there were two people implicated bearing the name of the prime accused -- Sher Singh Rana.

"It seems to be a deep-rooted conspiracy," Uttaranchal Police Chief A.K. Sharan said of reports that while one Rana was in police custody, another headed the team of Devi's assassins.

Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani on Tuesday attributed Devi's killings to a "canker of criminalization of politics" and appealed to political parties to dump leaders with criminal backgrounds.

Devi, elected to Parliament for the first time in 1996, was part of India's bandit folklore, with her life on the run in the rugged ravines of the central state of Madhya Pradesh in the early 1980s the subject of numerous films and books.

Her turbulent life, captured in Bollywood director Shekhar Kapur's 1996 movie "Bandit Queen", comprised many incarnations, from abused child-bride to feared outlaw and finally member of Parliament.