Guwahati: The one-man inquiry committee formed to probe the quality of a set of bullet-proof jackets has given a clean chit to Assam police in its final report.

Dispur had constituted the committee, headed by additional chief secretary Kumar Sanjay Krishna, following the death of sub-inspector Bhaskar Kalita when bullets fired by Ulfa (Independent) terrorists during an encounter at Bordumsa on May 4 pierced his bullet-proof jacket.

"The inquiry report was submitted to the chief secretary on August 10. It evaluated all quality aspects of the batch of jackets under question and found the products to adhere to standards. There was no deviation," a source in the state home department said.

The Assam police had received 1,560 bullet-resistant jackets in January 2013 after a prolonged tender process, which began in June 2010, and distributed it to its personnel in all the districts in the subsequent months.

After Kalita's death, his family members, Opposition parties and a few social activists questioned the quality of the jackets procured by the force.

In the beginning of the probe, Krishna randomly picked five jackets of the same batch from Jorhat and Tezpur and sent them to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Chandigarh, for quality check. "The CFSL checked the vests and inferred that these were high quality state-of-the-art jackets," the source said.

While procuring the jackets, the then additional director-general of police (MPC), Anil Kumar Jha, who had issued the supply order, had, for the first time in the history of the force, tested the products at the CFSL.

In the procurement exercise, the technical committee was headed by former inspector-general of police (SOU) N.I. Hussain, while the purchase committee was headed by then director-general of police Shankar Barua.

While carrying out a departmental inquiry over the incidents leading to death of Kalita, the Assam police had found that the officer was not wearing the jacket in a "proper manner".

The bullet-proof jacket comprises two layers, hard and soft armour panels, and both need to be worn together for best protection. But Kalita went out for the operation only wearing the hard panel.

"Moreover, the jackets are capable of resisting a bullet from 10-metre range while Kalita was shot from point blank range. Just the hard panel was insufficient to stop the bullet," another source said.

This particular set of jackets has been attracting controversies since the beginning of the tender process, in which Bangalore-based Tata Advanced Materials and New Delhi-based SM Pulp Packaging also competed. PTI