MUMBAI, March 30 -- Over the last five years, the Maharashtra police have reduced their response time to the national emergency response number 112 by 81%, said officials. In 2021, when the helpline number was introduced in the state, police teams took an average of 55 minutes to reach the spots, but now they only take around 8 minutes. The 112 helpline, introduced nationwide after the 2012 Nirbhaya case in Delhi, serves as a single emergency number for police, fire, ambulance, and women's and child helpline services. Nikhil Gupta, additional director general of police, law and order, said, "In Maharashtra, we started the 112 helpline in 2021. We tied up with Mahindra Defence and started a primary contact centre in Navi Mumbai and a secondary contact centre in Nagpur. Training was provided to the staff, connectivity and network issues were solved, district police controls were upgraded with modern software and mobile data terminals were installed on police vehicles." The number of distress calls has risen sharply since the launch. The helpline received about 160,000 calls in 2021, which increased to 860,000 in 2022 and 1.1 million in 2023. In 2024, calls rose to 1.6 million, and in 2025 to 1.9 million. This year, the helpline has already received 400,000 calls as of March 12. "Initially, the average time taken by us to respond to a call was as high as 55 minutes, which was brought down to 22 minutes and later to 11 minutes. Now, we have taken steps to further reduce the response time and brought it down to 8 minutes," Gupta said. The additional DGP said that since Sadanand Date took over as the director general of police they have held a number of meetings with unit heads across the state to review the situation regularly and guide the unit heads in reducing response timings. At first, once the control room received an emergency call, the call-takers took 3 to 4 minutes to assess the situation, however, staff-training has helped reduce that time significantly. The police have also introduced a "hotlist" category for high-priority emergencies, such as ongoing attacks. "In such cases, even though the caller is still explaining the problem, their location is immediately shared with the local unit to ensure that help is already on its way to the caller while the call continues," Gupta added. The police added that the helpline does face issues like drunkards calling to waste time or repeat callers who create an unnecessary ruckus over property disputes. "To address this, every call is categorised immediately after it is received based on urgency. The district police then trace the location and dispatch the nearest mobile police vehicles to provide immediate help to the caller," the additional DGP added. Other challenges too persist. In urban areas, traffic can slow response times, while in rural regions, long distances and poor connectivity pose difficulties. Some rural police stations cover large areas, making it harder to reach remote locations quickly. The state has deployed 1,502 four-wheelers and 2,269 two-wheelers, all equipped with GPS tracking and integrated software. The control rooms operate all day with 262 call-takers....