Mardaani Rani Mukerji is by far the coolest lady cop of Bollywood, here's why

Rani Mukerji is all set to play the role of a cop in her upcoming film Mardaani, which will releases this Friday (22 August). Mukerji plays CBI officer Shivani Shivaji Roy, a tough cop who, in the tradition of Bollywood-sytle policing, singlehandedly takes on a child prostitution racket. What else can we expect from a woman who has Shivaji as her second name? [caption id=“attachment_1672443” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Courtesy: Facebook[/caption] While Roy’s policewoman avatar is a departure for the actress who has been seen in mostly very girly roles (we will ignore the rather terrible cross-dressing cricketer she played in Dil Bole Hadippa), Shivani Shivaji Roy is the latest in a long list of fearsome female police officers from Bollywood. The real difference is that she doesn’t have a personal vendetta that she’s carrying out, using her job, and neither is she strutting her stuff like a model. Instead, she’s looking like a regular woman — which is in itself unheard of in Bollywood. If the trailer of Mardaani is anything to go by, Mukerji’s Shivani walks and talks like a man, and can pack a punch and shoot bullets without hesitation. Since she is a figment of Pradeep Sarkar’s imagination, she also uses hammy punchlines while threatening the bad guys and might do some absurd stunts in the film, which may just turn her into not-your-everyday-lady-cop character after all. However, to know how Mukerji’s Shivani turns out, we will have to wait till Friday. Until then, here’s our pick of five Bollywood female police characters that you might remember (although not necessarily for the right reasons). Priyanka Chopra as Namrata in Gunday (2014): There has been no woman cop till date (real or fictitious) who would have so readily agreed to marry just for the sake of keeping her cover. However, in the film Gunday, Priyanka Chopra’s Namrata was an undercover cop who agreed to not only pretend to be a cabaret dancer, but also went so far as to marry one of Calcutta’s biggest goons, Bikram (Ranveer Singh). [caption id=“attachment_1672415” align=“aligncenter” width=“380”] A screengrab from the film Gunday[/caption] Was it because of Namrata’s dedication to her job or because no policeman in her vicinity had Bikram’s six-pack? After watching the film, we reckon that it’s the second reason. Especially since for the better part of the film, it looked like Namrata was all set to live happily every after with Bikram, without giving a moment’s thought to the crime branch, her cover and Bikram’s illegal business. Bipasha Basu as Shonali in Dhoom 2 (2006): How bad is your situation when even Uday Chopra doesn’t take you seriously? Shonali Bose bad. French manicured fingers and silky long locks, white racer back, blue denim with a trendy belt and guns hanging from both sides of her shoulder holster — meet Shonali Bose (Bipasha Basu), the model cop in Dhoom2. [caption id=“attachment_1672419” align=“aligncenter” width=“380”] Courtesy: ibn live[/caption] Shonali, when she not treating the police headquarters’ corridors like a fashion runway, threw caution and professional discretion to the winds by dancing to a song with lyrics like, “touch me, don’t touch me, touch me soniya”. In the film, her job as a cop is fairly simple: she has to work with ACP Jai Dixit (Abhishek Bachchan) to catch a thief. Within five minutes, she’s managed to break her leg and is cooling her heels in hospital. But hey, we still remember her striding down the corridor, working the skintight denim and heels. Madhuri Dixit as Inspector Ganga in Khalnayak (1993): Once upon a time there were two little kids called Hansel and Gretel and they left a trail of bread pieces to find their way back home. Circa 1993, in a Subhash Ghai film called Khalnayak, there was a clever woman cop named Ganga (Madhuri Dixit), who left back a trinket trail so that her cop boyfriend, Ram (Jackie Shroff) would find her and arrest her kidnapper, Ballu (Sanjay Dutt). Strangely enough, no one stole those random bits of jewellery strewn around the road, but let’s not get pedantic. [caption id=“attachment_1672427” align=“aligncenter” width=“380”] A screengrab from youtube[/caption] Dixit was actually one of the better lady cops of the Bollywood crime universe. She mitigated fights about jail inmates, played a rather clever game with her kidnapper and danced to an unforgettable song that isn’t raunchy by today’s standards, but back in the 1990s, it raised eyebrows sky high. The real shame is that she had to let Jackie Shroff get the credit of nabbing the bad guy. Rekha as Namrata From Phool Bane Angaray (1991): Before there was Dabangg and Singham, Rekha starred in a film called Phool Bane Angaray in which she managed to accomplish a task that even Rajinikanth couldn’t manage in the film. [caption id=“attachment_1672431” align=“aligncenter” width=“380”] Courtesy: ibn live[/caption] Inspector Ranjit Singh (Rajinikanth) is killed fighting crimes and his wife Namrata (Rekha) is molested by political goons. But instead of giving up and kowtowing to the pressures of the powerful politician, Namrata gets admitted to a police academy and returns as a police inspector to uproot the corrupt gangster/politician. Khaki has never been quite as potent as it was when Rekha wore it. Dimple Kapadia as Kiran in Zakhmi Aurat (1988): In Avtar Bhogal’s Zakhmi Aurat, Dimple Kapadia plays a cop called Kiran who is brutally raped. After her character fails to get justice from the courts despite providing a testimony against her rapists, Kiran, ashamed of herself for being apavitra, plans to quit the force, but her fiance Suraj (Raj Babbar) insists her not to and asks her to fight her assaulters and take revenge. And so she does. [caption id=“attachment_1672437” align=“aligncenter” width=“380”] Courtesy: Ibn live[/caption] There’s enough in Zakhmi Aurat to make you cringe if you watch it today, but for 1988, it was pretty progressive to see a man not only standing by his fiancee after she’s been raped, but also pushing her to take revenge.