Salman Khan fans may rejoice as the Dabangg franchise will continue and they will not be subjected to watching stone-faced cop characters that were played by yesteryear’s Iftekhar and Jagdish Raj. Ajay Devgn will continue to flex his muscles and crack a joke or two while playing Bajirao Singham. Inspector Daya of the telethriller ‘CID’ will still follow his boss ACP Pradyuman’s familiar command, “Daya, darvaaza tod do.”

Such characters could have become a thing of the past, thanks to the proposed draft of Maharashtra Protection of Internal Security Act (MPISA) 2016, which includes a provision that any person who personates a police officer for the purposes of entertainment, will be liable to face police action. Once the law was in place, the police could have interpreted actors playing police characters as interference in their functioning. They could have applied the rule to theatre, which often uses police hawaldar caricatures to entertain the audience.