The death of Bordumsa officer-in-charge Bhaskar Kalita has once again raised question marks on the quality of bulletproof jackets amid reports that the past Tarun Gogoi-led Congress Government procured inferior quality vests for the police force. Incidentally, despite wearing a bulletproof vest, as many as nine bullets had pierced into the body of Bhaskar Kalita during the fierce offensive against ULFA militants at Kujupathar in Bordumsa bordering the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh in Tinsukia district Friday night.
There have been allegations of a massive scam in the name of procuring bulletproof jackets by previous Congress governments, the last time vests to protect cops from militant bullets were procured was in 2011 during Congress rule.
“How did so many bullets pierce into his body when he was wearing a bulletproof jacket? Is it that the jackets were of inferior quality?” the slain police officer’s wife Sangeeta questioned senior police officials after her husband’s death.
Watch Video:
Earlier in 1995, when the Hiteswar Saikia-led Congress government was in power at Dispur, the police department had allegedly procured bulletproof jackets of inferior quality from a Delhi-based company, ignoring the more reliable ones manufactured by the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO).
Meanwhile, amid the debate over the bulletproof vests, the ULFA(I) using the very sophisticated Israel-made IWI Tavor X95 has once again confirmed that the militant outfit is not a spent force and that it has boosted its arsenal with some most modern and lethal arms.
The IWI Tavor X95, incidentally, is an Israeli bullpup assault rifle designed and produced by the Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) and was selected in 2009 as the future standard issued weapon of the Israeli infantry.
