Cops Caught on Camera

YC Pawar: Om Puri’s no nonsense angry cop act in Ardh Satya was said to have been inspired by Mumbai’s the then Additional Commissioner of Police (ACP) YC Pawar, who became famous for driving out the central Mumbai based don Vardharajan Mudaliar. Mani Ratnam’s Nayakan glorified and changed the way we looked at Mudaliar, though Pawar’s celluloid interpretations continued the tough cop image in the portrayals of Nasser (Nayakan) and Aditya Pancholi in the film’s Hindi remake Dayavan.

Kiran Bedi: India’s first lady IPS officer Kiran Bedi’s success story spun forth quite a few spirited lady cop lead acts in the 80s and 90s from Hema Malini’s Andha Kanoon to Rekha’s Phool Bane Angarey including Vijayashanti’s national award winner Karthavyam (remade as Tejaswini in Hindi). However, the closest that came to telling a believable story, allegedly inspired by Bedi’s life, was Kavita Chaudhary’s popular tele-series Udaan.

Daya Nayak: From providing creative inputs for Ram Gopal Varma’s Company to inspiring films like Ab Tak Chappan and Kagaar, Nayak, whose career may be in a flux, has emerged as one of Bollywood’s most common reference cop, with even a Kannada film, Encounter, based on his life.

Rakesh Maria: Apart from having an inspiring performance based on him by Kay Kay in Black Friday as the young police officer heading the investigations into the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts ACP Maria also happens to be one of the first police officers to be portrayed as himself and in the lead in a Hindi cop film, instead of being a mere larger than life alleged inspiration like his predecessors.

Amarjeet Singh Samra: The ex-Mumbai Police Commissioner during whose tenure the Mumbai bomb blasts case was solved may not have had as meaty a role as Maria in Black Friday, but his signature turban and matter-of-fact speak did more than amply remind us of the first Sikh commissioner of the Mumbai police, and one of its most questioned faces through the blast investigations.

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