Police reaching Dial 112 calls in average of three minutes, says CM Fadnavis

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has said the average time taken to reach an emergency call under the Maharashtra Police's Dial 112 service has now come down to three minutes. According to him, the police are no longer like the "police in Hindi films", who arrive at the scene after the crime has taken place.

Mr Fadnavis was speaking on Tuesday at the inauguration of several projects of the Pimpri Chinchwad Police Commissionerate in Pune district. He attributed the improvement to modern technology and digital monitoring systems. He said these systems fix accountability at every link of the emergency response.

Mr Fadnavis, who also holds the Home portfolio, claimed that Maharashtra has become the country's leading state in police response time. According to him, police personnel reach the spot within an average of three minutes of receiving an emergency call.

He said: "After someone calls the police, our policemen are no longer like the police shown in Hindi films, who reach the spot only after everything is over. Today our police intervene before a crime takes place or while it is happening."

The Chief Minister said every call to the Dial 112 emergency service is recorded. The system also digitally logs when the call came in and when the police personnel reached the spot.

Mr Fadnavis said: "There is a digital footprint of every activity. It is not just a matter of picking up the phone and making an entry in a register. The system records when the call came in and when the responding police personnel reached the spot. No one can make a false claim."

According to him, these digital records allow officers to monitor the entire process. They also show when police personnel were dispatched and when they reached the scene.

Mr Fadnavis also said officers can assess the quality of the police response from the recordings of emergency calls. He added that the system can be used to check whether police personnel acted properly and treated callers appropriately. The Dial 112 service is used to contact emergency services in Maharashtra.