Lieutenant-General P N Hoon, a former Army commander of the Western Command, has claimed there was a plot to topple Rajiv Gandhi's government in 1987. He has also claimed that three crack para-commando battalions including one from the Western Command, were told to move for action in Delhi.
The 86-year-old Hoon has alleged that the then Army chief General Krishnaswami Sundarji and Lieutenant General S F Rodrigues, the vice chief of Army, who went on to become Army chief were involved in the plot.
Hoon hints in his just-released book, 'The Untold Truth', that the plan for a coup was hatched at the behest of certain very senior politicians who did not share cordial relations with Rajiv. The Lieutenant-General states that at his farewell function in 1987 hosted by the then Punjab governor Siddharth Shankar Ray in Chandigarh, Giani Zail Singh had blamed Rajiv Gandhi of corruption and negligence. Singh also said Rajiv was unconcerned about the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
Hoon has claimed that as chief of the Western Command in May-June 1987, he was in Delhi on official work when he received a message that a letter had been received at command headquarters from army HQ seeking three para-commando battalions.
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