The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has found serious loopholes in the implementation of the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System (CCTNS) and identified lapses in registering missing complaints of children under 18 years.

The report was tabled in the Odisha Assembly on Wednesday.

“Business rules had not been mapped correctly into the system through the implementation of necessary application controls, which resulted in discrepancies such as the recording of 5,566 missing complaints of children below 18 years without the registration of FIRs, although it was prerequisite and mandatory. Despite having provisions in the system for registration and maintenance, 9,642 non-cognisable cases had not been recorded by 29 police stations in CCTNS,” the CAG in its report said.

The CAG has found that the Crime and Criminal Information System (CCIS) was incomplete and incorrect, due to the absence of digitisation of key documents and errors in the digitisation of data from physical records. Additionally, the CCTNS could not be utilised for the retrieval of data as intended.

“There were deficiencies in the controls for user access management as the system permitted the filing of chargesheets by personnel not authorised to do so,” the report said.

The report also pointed out deficiencies in implementing essential controls, such as mapping of police stations with the correct reporting authorities, which adversely impacted effective supervision of the status of criminal cases and resulted in continued use of manual processes. The report said application controls to ensure identification of accused and criminals as well as complainants, had not been implemented, resulting in multiple IDs for the accused, criminals and complainants in the system.

The report also revealed how there was significant failure in enforcing chronological and logical sequencing of actions, resulting in untenable and illogical recording of events, such as the registration of FIRs prior to the registration of GD entries and recording of arrests and seizures prior to recording of FIRs.

There were deficiencies in the system related to the synchronisation of data between local offline servers and the central online server of CCTNS. Due to a lack of training, the staff did not have the working knowledge to operate the system, the report said.