Inside into Mumbai Police’s witty, savage Twitter handle

From references to pop culture, vernacular puns, rhymes, and funny memes, the Mumbai Police’s Twitter handle uses it all, to make information memorable and fun

From references to pop culture, vernacular puns, rhymes, and funny memes, the Mumbai Police’s Twitter handle uses it all, to make information memorable and fun.

HT Image

On Tuesday, for example, a tweet from the Mumbai Police urged Mumbaikars to stay at home, using memes with popular songs from singers and music bands around the world: Lady Gaga, One Direction, BTS and John Legend. And only last week, the Twitter handle promptly and wittily replied to a user who wanted to meet his girlfriend amid fresh restrictions imposed by the Maharashtra government owing to the rise in Covid-19 cases. Mumbai Police’s tweet read, “We understand it’s essential for you sir but unfortunately it doesn’t fall under our essentials or emergency categories! Distance makes the heart grow fonder & currently, you healthier P.S. We wish you lifetime together. This is just a phase. #StayHomeStaySafe”

Sunchika Pandey, a former journalist, who now runs HAT media officially contracted to operate the Mumbai Police Twitter handle, said, “If information catches people’s interest, they make effort to understand it, and then it stays on their mind. Especially since the Covid-19 outbreak, we are all flooded with information, frequent announcements from the government, important updates.”

A team of seven employees of HAT media, and two dozen policemen operate the Twitter handle in three shifts, round the clock. A small room called the web-cell in the office of commissioner of Mumbai Police, and HAT media’s office is the hub of this creative content.

Twitter handle tweets at least 5 to 6 times a day, which includes awareness post and traffic updates. The handle actively responds to queries from Twitter users, to citizens who reach out for police help.

“We wanted the nature of tweets to reflect the friendliness and approachability of Mumbai Police, and now the humour and wit have become a part of the handle’s identity, it makes people smile,” Pandey said.

The approval for witty tweets comes from the deputy commissioner of police (operation) and joint commissioner of police (law and order), but content generation is more of a team effort, Pandey said. For routine tweets, a format has been put in place, that all operators follow.

“For example, the tweet about this man asking police for permission to step out to meet his girlfriend was spotted by a constable. He shared it on the web cells internal WhatsApp group, where it was discussed how the team can reply,” Pandey said.

“Similarly, we randomly came up with the name of my firm when we founded it, HAT media, that has been contracted by the Mumbai Police to handle the account. It’s short for heads and tails of strategic content. We later made a tag line out of it - think hatke,” Pandey added.

The Twitter handle was first started as a joint venture between the Mumbai Police and Sunchika Pandey, taking inspiration from the active Twitter account of Banglore Police, in December 2015. Within the first two days, it got 10,000 followers. Today, it is followed by five million Twitter users.