A uniform, especially the ubiquitous khaki of the police force, is not known to inspire either wit or humour. But Mumbai Police are upending this stereotype. From movies to memes, popular culture is their muse.
And it’s a young team that is leading the charge with quirky but informative messages.
One popular tweet on the Mumbai Police’s twitter handle was a GIF of a song from the Shah Rukh Khan blockbuster, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. Captioned ‘Fraudsters savings le Jayenge’, it alerted Mumbaikars not to share their OTPs with anyone.
To mark World Mental Health Day, Mumbai Police used an image of a WhatsApp inbox with the message, ‘How are you?’ And answer that as “I am fine. All good.” The idea was to encourage people to speak up about mental health.
These and many such tweets have become the highlight of Mumbai Police’s social media pages, especially its Twitter identity since 2016.
Over 2,32,000 tweets, 4,000 odd videos and photos, and 4.9 million followers have made Mumbai Police one of the most sought-after Twitter handles among the public service handles.
And it’s 40-year-old Sunchika Pandey, a former crime reporter, who is at the helm of this hugely successful initiative.
“I always knew it had to be the Mumbai police to begin with since the work they do is significant. In times of crisis, it’s the journalists and police who are out,” says Pandey, the founder of Think Hat Media, which handles Mumbai Police’s social media account.
Also read: From Param Bir to Sanjay Pandey — the sorry story of the ‘rot’ in Maharashtra Police
Straddling both worlds
Sunchika Pandey was working as a crime reporter in TV news media before she ventured into the world of social media, which was still a relatively new medium at the time. She quit her job a decade ago, and joined the social media team of Satyamev Jayate, the talk show hosted by actor Amir Khan, which focused on social issues.
“That’s when I realised the power of social media and the impact it could have. This was the medium of the future where information could be disseminated,” she says.
One episode on police reforms resonated with Pandey. She was moved by the hardships they faced, and it reminded her of the career she had left behind. “I started missing crime journalism. My comfort zone was the police. But I was also sure that I did not want to go back to reporting news.”
And then she had an epiphany, one that would allow her to straddle both worlds. She could handle the social media account for the police.
At the time, only the Bengaluru Police had a Twitter handle with just 50,000 followers. And it was only being used to give traffic updates. Pandey believed that she could do much more for the Mumbai Police.
Mumbai was Pandey’s city, and the police had been her beat. And so began multiple rounds of talks with the top brass. She was able to convince them of the potential of a social media handle to reach out to the millions of citizens of India’s most populous city.
“Because of my connections with the police department, access was not a problem. We decided to use satire and responsible humour, as we call it, for our messaging,” she adds.
But Pandey started small, with just one content designer to assist her. The goal was to create a handle that was accessible to everyone. Besides English, they have a Marathi handle as well.
Before going live, there was a training period of six months. The onus was on Pandey to train police personnel to how to use the medium effectively, and harness its power. “Basically, the training was about using the correct communication medium. Twitter won’t work everywhere or for each and every message,” she says.
Finally, on New Year’s Eve in December 2015, the Mumbai Police went live on Twitter. It was a trial by fire—the busiest day for the police force when people are on the streets celebrating all night long. “We knew that people would test it,” says Pandey. And she was right.
The protocol was that no complaint should go unheard and unattended as it was a “24/7 account.” The Twitter handle started gaining traction within three months when people realised that someone was listening to them at the other end.
The tsunami of complaints was overwhelming, from potholes to traffic jams. “People would even write to us about various crimes that happened in their area and then expect an FIR to be registered online,” Pandey adds. There was a lot of back and forth between the police and the public for the first six months.
The first campaign was #Selfiewithmycop for which Mumbai police collaborated with a radio channel. “The message was that while you all are partying, you will see a cop standing in between to make sure you reach home safely. That went pretty well,” she says.
Apart from handling social media accounts for the Mumbai Police, the team is also responsible for training personnel on how to manage social media and collaborate with various departments while running online campaigns on cyber security, narcotics awareness and women’s safety, among others.
“We work like a control room, an online control room. Our webcell team is also a part of this social media team and whatever complaints come, they forward it to the concerned department. The response is 24/7,” says Pandey.
Online threats, social media help
Rashmi Karandikar, IPS officer and ex-DCP of cyber cell has handled some of the more high-profile cases. She was assigned the Bulli Bai app case with its fake auction of Muslim women, the Clubhouse app case, which targeted women, and probed the online threats to cricketer Virat Kohli and actor Anushka Sharma’s daughter.
It was while working on these cases that she realised how social media can be wielded for good as well. In all these cases, people came forward on social media with information.
“People DMed us directly, saying they had information, which they had not discussed with anyone else. They told us, ‘We are sharing it with you since we trust Mumbai police.’ This even helped us solve those cases,” she adds.
It didn’t end there. When each case was cracked, users praised the Mumbai police on Twitter. For many police personnel, who have become inured to constant criticism, it was a novel experience. “Many people reached out to us, and the praise that Mumbai police got was quite amazing,” says Karandikar. The police got appreciation from not just Mumbai people but all over the world when those cyber cases were solved.
Also read: Mumbai Police spread traffic awareness with a ‘Brahmastra’ twist
Young Brigade
Think Hat started with Pandey and a lone content designer. Today, it has a staff strength of as many as 11 people who manage accounts for the municipal corporation, railways and other police departments.
Since taking over Mumbai Police’s social media handle, the company has expanded, managing accounts for Pune, Thane and Maharashtra police as well. It has also, in some capacity, helped and assisted the UP, Delhi and Kolkata police over the years.
Pandey credits their success to her “young brigade”—men and women in their 20s who have their finger on the pulse of popular culture. They navigate Twitter, Facebook and Instagram with an ease that senior police officials are still unable to master.
Sanika Sathyan, Chinmay Munghate are ideators and content writers who work on English and Marathi campaigns respectively. They enjoy the flexibility of the job, which tests their creativity every day. “It’s an ongoing process. Whenever we see something, whenever we are watching a show, it’s always in the back of our head. Sometimes I feel why can’t I just enjoy the movie without thinking of it as a context,” Sanika says.
They intuitively understand how some messages will only work in English, while others will appeal to those who speak Marathi. Harry Potter references, for example, are used only for English messages. “We converted the famous Marathi song- ‘Mala Jau dya na Ghari’ (Let me go home) to ‘Mala Rahu dya na ghari (Let me stay at home) during Covid. Such references are language specific. It can be a challenge replicating the tweet for another language,” said Munghate.
The same content can’t be used everywhere. The Mumbai Police content with references to Bollywood don’t work for the rest of Maharashtra. But none of the content goes without the approval of the concerned department, they say.
Gargi Sankpal of Mumbai’s J J School of Arts takes care of creating graphics and images to go with the tweets.
“My challenge is to stay very responsible while using any image or creating any design to make sure it doesn’t hurt anybody’s sentiments,” she says. “The colour, tone, font that I used has to be clean, simple to read, and easy on the eyes. And that can be challenging,” she says.
It’s not all fun and games. Every team member understands the responsibility of the job, and that their message will be read by millions of people. They have grown so much as individuals and colleagues, says Pandey.
In their office in Mumbai’s Santacruz, Sankpal, Sathyan and the others are already discussing their next message. They scour the internet for popular memes and sift through their own experiences for inspiration.
“I see value in my work since this is a public service work. This is the place where I want to work,” says Sanika with pride.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)