Retired lieutenant general P.N. Hoon, who was formerly commander of the Western Army, died on Monday night.
Hoon was 90 years old and had been admitted at the Army Command Hospital at Panchkula due to illness. Hoon was born in Abbottabad (now part of Pakistan) in 1929.
He joined the Indian Military Academy in Dehradun in 1947, prior to being commissioned. Hoon saw active service in the 1962 war with China where he was involved in defending the post of Barahoti. In the 1965 war, Hoon was part of an armoured division fighting in the Punjab area. One of the crowning achievements of his career was the capture of the Siachen Glacier in 1984 when he was commanding the 15 Corps of the Army in Jammu and Kashmir.
After retirement, Hoon published a book The Untold Truth in 2015 in which he alleged that the military exercise Brasstacks in 1986-1987 was a plan to build up a "situation" for a fourth war with Pakistan. Brasstacks involved the deployment of over 2 lakh Indian Army personnel and thousands of armoured vehicles on the border with Pakistan, which triggered a counter-deployment by Islamabad. Tension cooled after India and Pakistan held negotiations in early 1987.
Hoon claimed then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was "not aware of plans" for a war. Hoon alleged then Army chief general K. Sundarji and minister of state for defence Arun Singh had planned Brasstacks to provoke Pakistan into launching an attack on Kashmir, which could be used as a pretext to launch a full-fledged war.
Hoon claimed Rajiv Gandhi learnt of the intent of Brasstacks at a dinner party on Army Day (January 15, 1987); Hoon claimed to have told Rajiv then “The western Army is in fine fettle and very soon I shall be past our battle stations and will give you Sind on one side and Lahore on the other."
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Hoon then claimed Sundarji and Arun Singh had planned the exercise as the former wanted to become field marshal and latter the prime minister.
In his book, Hoon had also alleged that there was a plot in 1987 involving then president Giani Zail Singh to topple Rajiv's government using Army units. Hoon claimed he was asked by then vice-chief of the Army S.F. Rodrigues to provide three commando battalions, about which he promptly alerted Rajiv.
However, Rodrigues and other officials serving at the time had contradicted Hoon on his claims on Brasstacks and the abortive 'coup'.
Hoon joined the BJP in December 2013, assuming the role of adviser to the party on defence and security. Hoon had also been associated an NGO, We the Citizens, which filed pleas in the Supreme Court for abrogation of Article-35A, which had barred outsiders from buying property in Jammu and Kashmir. The NGO had been linked to the RSS.
