The first image was startling, to say the least.

A local daily Monday carried a photograph of Bollywood villain Shakti Kapoor guarded by a grim member of Nepal's Armed Police Force.

With Hindi film industry's well known bad man getting brick bats in real life after a television channel showed him as trying to lure a journalist onto his casting couch three years ago, and Mumbai police catching his son Siddhant at a rave party October, the first thoughts were that the 50-year-old had landed in fresh trouble at the Indo-Nepal border.

However, the doubts and fears have been resolved since then.

Kapoor, who made his mark as a formidable villain in Bollywood with the 1980 film Qurbani, is now officially in Nepal to plot further villainy.

The bad man turned comedian will make his debut in Nepal's film industry by acting in a Bhojpuri film, 'Hum Hui Hero Hindustani'.

Along with Kapoor, Indian telly actor Shahbaz Khan is also acting in the film that also stars Nepali film industry's action hero Biraj Bhatt and sex siren Rekha Thapa as well as one of the most talented and respected veterans of the industry, Mithila Sharma.

Bhojpuri is spoken by at least 2.5 million people in Nepal - almost nine percent of the population, and understood by even more.

It is spoken mostly in the southern districts of Nepal along the Indo-Nepal border, like Bara, Parsa, Chitwan and Rupandehi.

Nepal's star singer Udit Narain Jha, who has carved a niche for himself in Bollywood, has also made films in Bhojpuri from Nepal.

With Nepal's neighbouring Indian state Bihar launching a 24-hour Bhojpuri television channel in August and its Chief Minister Nitish Kumar having pledged to build a studio for Bhojpuri films, the Bhojpuri film industry is expected to get a boost in 2009.

This is Shakti Kapoor's fourth visit to the Himalayan republic. He came in the past to shoot with Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan (Mahaan), Mithun Chakravarty (Mil Gayi Manzil Mujhe) and Govinda (Banarasi Babu).

However, soon after his arrival at the Simra Airport in Nepal's Bara district Saturday, Kapoor was stymied by the weather.

With winter bringing in sudden fogs, flights from Simra were put on hold, forcing him to return to Kathmandu by road.