Akshay Kumar, who played the role of Raju, a happy-go-lucky kinda guy in both the Hera Pheri series, would of course not be in the third farncise, but the name Raju would stick again on the third series.

 

This time Raju would be two people. Instead Akshay Kumar's character Raju, is being replaced by Abhishek Bachchan as Raju Khabri, who is a roughish police informer and the other Raju who is a duplicate is being played by John Abraham.

 

John Abraham's character Raju, makes a living by selling pirated copies of Bhojpuri films.

 

The third series of Hera Pheri is produced by Firoz Nadiadwala asn was quoted as saying, "Akshay played the roguish and very popular character Raju in Hera Pheri. We have incorporated references in the dialogue to his character as gone missing. Writer-director Neeraj Vora has incorporated two characters named Raju who could have been played by Akshay. One is a character called Raju Khabri, a roguish police informer played by Abhishek Bachchan, and the other is Raju Duplicate played by John Abraham who makes a living by selling pirated copies of Bhojpuri films."

 

The writers scripted the story keeoing Akshay Kumar in mind, but never mind if he's not part of the movie anymore, atleast we get to see Raju in two different characters now.