BHUBANESWAR: The national human rights commission (NHRC) slammed Odisha police for allegedly under-reporting encounter deaths of people in police firing to the former and national crime records bureau (NCRB) in 2016. The rights commission reacted sharply after finding wide discrepancy in data, compiled by the state police in comparison to the figures sent to the NHRC and NCRB in 2016.According to the NCRB’s ‘Crime in India’ statistical data, total five persons were killed in separate police encounters across Odisha in 2016. The NHRC’s data disputed the figure and put the encounter deaths at 11 in the same year. Shockingly, Odisha police’s own statistics stated that total 43 persons were killed in police encounters in 2016.On Wednesday, the state home department sought a report from the Crime Branch to find out the cause of the data mismatch. The home department intervened after NHRC’s secretary general Ambuj Sharma in August wrote to Odisha chief secretary Aditya Padhi about the discrepancy in data, involving encounter deaths in police firing. TOI has possessed copy of Sharma’s letter in which he expressed displeasure over the data mismatch and urged Padhi to look into the matter “personally” and take up the issue with concerned officials for an “analysis, corrective action and fixing of responsibility for such under-reporting of data.”Contacted, the Crime Branch’s additional director general Santosh Upadhyay said he would verify the reasons of the alleged data discrepancy. “We never under-report any crime data to NCRB and NHRC. We always send the exact nature of data or statistics sought by NCRB and NHRC. I will find out the reason of the data mismatch,” Upadhyay told TOI.Odisha police stated that the data compiled by the state is always authentic in comparison to the statistics released by different national agencies. “We usually send data of different crimes to the NCRB in July-August every year. Since NCRB compiles wide ranges of statistics from across the country, they need the data early. NCRB hardly updates the crime data beyond July-August of a year,” a senior police officer said.Police said certain cases like robbery, dacoity, molestation, rape, attempt to murder and murder take different turns in course of investigation. “If we initially register a molestation case, we may subsequently (after some days, weeks or months) find rape angle behind the crime. In that case, the NCRB had received the first report of molestation, but did not revise the old data as finding of rape came very late. Such mismatches do occur in different categories of crimes. So the data released by Odisha police is authentic,” another officer said.

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