September 25, 2025

In a stunning revelation from Bhubaneswar, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has pointed out "serious lapses" in Odisha's Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System (CCTNS). The CAG's IT audit, covering the years from 2013 to March 2023, raises big red flags about the system's effectiveness and security. The damning report was laid before the Odisha Assembly on Wednesday evening. It uncovered troubling privacy breaches and sloppy police work, including officers preparing charge sheets who were not even designated as Investigating Officers (IOs). Imagine charge sheets in your case being done by the wrong person! One eye-popping detail highlights major control failures when it comes to maintaining a proper crime record. The audit found illogical sequences — like FIRs being registered before General Diary (GD) entries or arrests happening even before FIRs were recorded. How can a case be tracked right when the timeline itself is a mess? Even more startling, between 2018 and 2023, there were 2,080 instances in 217 police stations where charge sheets were prepared by officers who had no authority to do so. It’s like letting the wrong cooks into the kitchen! The audit also discovered 5,566 complaints about missing children below 18 years were entered into the system without registering the mandatory FIRs. This is a big no-no. And that’s not all — 29 police stations failed to record 9,642 non-cognisable cases in the CCTNS, even though the system had clear provisions for this. How many cases are slipping through the cracks? Privacy alarm bells rang loud when the report found that details of women victims and juvenile offenders were made public on the citizen portal in 1,631 cases across 405 police stations. Sensitive information just lying exposed! Finally, the report exposed more shoddy data handling: 368 cases were reported closed, but 190 of those had wrongly been marked closed because their finalized charge sheets weren’t sent to the courts. Closing cases without proper legal steps is a recipe for disaster. In short, the CAG's report is a wake-up call for Odisha's police system. The Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System, designed to speed up and clean up criminal justice, seems riddled with cracks. Will the state police fix these gaping holes? Only time will tell.

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Tags: Cctns, Cag audit, Odisha police, Crime data lapses, Privacy breach, Fir registration,