The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has brought to light “serious lapses” in the way Odisha has implemented its crucial Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System (CCTNS).
This comprehensive IT audit, which scrutinized the CCTNS’s performance and effectiveness from its launch in 2013 through March 2023, revealed a troubling pattern of issues. The detailed findings were recently presented to the State Assembly on Wednesday, September 24, 2025.
The audit uncovered significant privacy breaches and numerous investigative and prosecutorial shortcomings. Among the most alarming findings was the preparation of charge sheets by officers who were not officially designated as investigating officers (IOs) for those specific cases.
A critical control failure in the system led to illogical and chronologically inconsistent recording of events. Instances were found where First Information Reports (FIRs) were registered *before* General Diary (GD) entries, and even arrests and seizures were recorded *prior* to the corresponding FIRs being filed.
Specifically, the audit identified 2,080 cases across 217 police stations between 2018 and 2023 where charge sheets were unlawfully prepared by non-designated officers. Furthermore, 5,566 complaints concerning missing children under 18 were logged into the system without the mandatory prerequisite of registering an FIR.
Despite provisions for recording all cases, 29 police stations failed to log 9,642 non-cognizable cases in the CCTNS. Adding to the privacy concerns, the report highlighted 1,631 instances across 405 police stations where sensitive details of women victims and juvenile offenders were inappropriately disclosed on the public citizen portal.
In another egregious oversight, the CAG discovered that 368 cases were falsely marked as “closed” in the system. A deeper investigation revealed that in 190 of these cases, the finalized charge sheets had never even been forwarded to the relevant court, indicating severe administrative negligence and potential cover-ups.