He defended Poonch in the face of determined enemy attack over two nights
Col Panjab Singh, Vir Chakra awardee and a decorated veteran of the 1971, war passed away at the Command Hospital in Chandimandir, in Haryana on Monday due to post-COVID complications, the Army said on Tuesday. He was 79. Col. Singh had lost his elder son Anil Kumar to COVID-19 on May 21.
Born on February 15, 1942, Col. Singh was commissioned into the 6th Batallion of the Sikh Regiment on December16, 1967. He went on to command the Battalion from October 12, 1986 to July 29, 1990.
In the 1971 war, during Operation Cactus Lilly, the 6th Sikh occupied 13 kms of front on the heights above Poonch in Jammu and Kashmir covering two strategic points, the loss of which would have directly threatened Poonch. Col. Singh, then a Major, was commanding a company deployed at Tund which had been actually limited to a platoon with the company headquarters, an Army statement said.