Dharmendra and Hema Malini in a still from Sholay

Hyderabad, Nov. 26: While the rest of India is busy measuring Shah Rukh Khan’s Don against Amitabh Bachchan’s original, a series of Sholay remakes has stolen the scene in Andhra Pradesh.

Except that it’s a single scene being re-enacted over and over again, and in real life.

An army of jilted lovers is clambering atop water tanks, tall buildings and even stadium floodlight posts, threatening to jump unless their loved ones rush to their arms.

And like the lovelorn Veeru in the 1975 film, who by a similar threat gets villagers to pressure the girl’s aunt into agreeing to the marriage, many of them are succeeding.

In these real-life instances, though, it’s a harried police force who are being forced to play matchmaker.

The police have counted nearly a dozen such “stunts” in the state since 20-year-old Sandhya succeeded in getting her man in Karimnagar on Monday.

Her suicide threat had 19-year-old Srinivas, under the police’s prodding, climbing up the water tank to exchange garlands. That Sandhya was arrested after coming down, on the charge of attempted suicide, hasn’t proved a deterrent for the desperados who have quickly followed her example.

A young man in Vijayawada climbed a 60-foot-high floodlight post in Hyderabad’s Lal Bahadur Shastri Stadium, prompting the police to persuade the girl’s parents in his hometown to come round. For now, the youth is in custody but the marriage is on.

A mother of two was not so lucky in Warangal on Saturday afternoon.

She had perched herself atop a water tank but the husband who left her two years ago — perhaps with the wisdom marriage brings — judged it as the caper it was and stayed away. The woman is behind bars.

Hyderabad additional police commissioner A.K. Khan says the police know the suicide threats are a “gimmick” to enlist their help; but they can’t take a chance.

Khan cited how, two months ago, a man in Karimnagar town had positioned himself on the roof of a three-storey building and threatened to jump if his former wife didn’t withdraw her attempt-to-murder case against him.

She refused and 38-year-old Abdul Rahim was as good as his word.

So, arresting the pranksters as soon as they climb down is the police’s only way of sending a message across.

“We want to make it clear to these young men and women that they cannot win every time. They cannot exploit the police again and again for personal gain,” the additional police commissioner said.

But hardly had he finished when the report came in of a 22-year-old girl having climbed to the top of a building in Vijayawada, demanding her boyfriend come back to her.