Imagine you are a tourist visiting the Jagannath temple town of Puri. Your phone goes missing in the crowd. In the past, you would have had to locate the nearest police station, join a queue, navigate unfamiliar bureaucracy, and hope someone at the desk spoke your language.
Today, you scan a small black-and-white square on a poster, send a single word on WhatsApp, and the help begins.
That single word is a simple “Hi”.
On 2 April 2026, Puri Police launched what they are calling the “Puri Police Assistant”, a WhatsApp-based chatbot accessible round the clock.
Citizens and tourists can access the 24×7 service by scanning a QR code or sending a “Hi” message to +91 8763199400 via WhatsApp. The chatbot provides services including filing e-complaints, reporting lost mobile phones, giving feedback, locating nearby police stations, providing parking information, and offering tourist assistance.
The project is supported by PNB ONE and implemented with technological support from Rezler Systems.
SP Pratya Singh, who led the initiative alongside Central IG Satyajit Nayak, put it plainly: “Puri Police is always committed to the service and safety of the people. This WhatsApp chatbot service will take our services closer, and citizens can get immediate assistance.”
The ambition behind that statement is larger than it sounds.
The trust deficit that no FIR can fix
Across India, policing has long wrestled with a fundamental problem that is as human as it is institutional: people do not trust the police enough to reach out to them. According to the Status of Policing in India Report, 36% of citizens surveyed expressed limited or no trust in police institutions, with scepticism arising from recurring concerns about transparency, accountability, and accessibility.
Puri Police introduces a 24×7 WhatsApp-based chatbot service that allows users to file complaints, report lost phones, and access tourist assistance through a simple “Hi” message. Photograph: (Representational image)
A more recent analysis noted that citizen confidence in the police had declined by nearly 11% since 2020, according to the Common Cause-Lokniti ‘Status of Policing in India’ Survey 2023.
The reasons are layered. Many citizens, particularly in rural and semi-urban areas, find police stations physically and psychologically forbidding.
The very idea of walking into one to report even a minor grievance can feel daunting, which means problems fester, small crimes go unreported, and the distance between citizens and law enforcement quietly widens.
This is especially acute in a place like Puri, where a constant stream of pilgrims and tourists arrive with little familiarity with local systems and even less time to navigate them.
The Puri Police chatbot is, in essence, an attempt to dissolve that distance without waiting for trust to rebuild itself organically over the years.
Odisha’s longer tradition of grassroots policing
What makes the Puri initiative meaningful in context is that it sits within a much older, more textured effort by Odisha to involve communities in their own safety.
The state has long operated the “Ama Police Samiti” model, where police stations are divided into beats, a beat officer is assigned to each, and a samiti of 20 to 25 members meets monthly at every police station to discuss matters of crime, law and order, and community welfare.
Grama Rakhis are also engaged in rural areas for what the district administration describes as “optimum rural policing” in isolated regions.
These Grama Rakhis, or village guards, have been a cornerstone of rural security in Odisha since they were institutionalised under the Odisha Grama Rakhi Act, 1967.
More than 18,000 of them serve across the state, functioning as the eyes and ears of local police in areas where station reach is limited. Their role is not ceremonial: they report on law and order situations, assist in crime detection, and maintain a direct line to police stations.
What happens when you scan the code
The chatbot’s design reflects a clear understanding of who will actually use it. Rather than asking citizens to download a new application, create an account, or learn a new interface, people can simply scan the official QR code or send “Hi” to the dedicated WhatsApp number. The chatbot is designed to respond quickly and guide users through various services in a user-friendly manner.
The services it offers span the most common reasons someone might need to contact the police: filing a complaint electronically, reporting a stolen or lost mobile phone, locating the nearest police station, obtaining parking information, and accessing tourist assistance with safety guidance and directions.
For Puri, this last feature matters enormously. The city receives millions of visitors annually for the Rath Yatra and everyday temple visits, many of them elderly pilgrims travelling alone, unfamiliar with the city, and carrying modest smartphones.
For them, a WhatsApp number is not a technological barrier. It is the most familiar interface in their lives.
Odisha Police Director General Yogesh Bahadur Khurania has spoken of community policing as a “bridge of trust” between the police and the public, expressing confidence that with greater public participation, crime rates will decline and peace will prevail across society.
That language of bridging is worth holding on to, as it acknowledges that a gap exists and that closing it requires effort from the institutional side, not just patience from citizens.
A model worth watching
Odisha is not alone in experimenting with technology to improve police-citizen relations. In Rohtak, Haryana, the police introduced a QR code-based feedback system across all police stations, allowing complainants to rate officer behaviour, station cleanliness, and the transparency of the process using a digital form with 12 questions.
These are small experiments, but they share a common premise: that accessibility and accountability are not administrative luxuries but the minimum conditions for policing to work in a democracy.
What Puri’s chatbot adds to this conversation is a shift from feedback to action. Citizens are not just rating an experience; they are using a live channel to get help, which means the system is only as good as the response it generates on the other end.
The real test of the initiative will come not at launch but over months of use, as citizens experience whether a complaint filed at 11 pm on a WhatsApp chat actually results in someone calling back, following up, and closing the loop.
The QR code is small, almost easy to miss, and printed on a poster near the police station wall.
But what it opens is potentially something much larger: a police force that meets people where they already are, speaks in the language they already use, and begins, one “Hi” at a time, to feel a little less like an institution and a little more like a neighbour.
