Bhopaloshima Verdict or A Bad Joke
By Raja Jaikrishan
07 June, 2010
Countercurrents.org
Activists and gas victims Monday swarmed a Bhopal courtroom to hear the judgment. Tired of 25- year -long wait for this day, they came out murmuring protest against the lighter sentence for eight convicts.
The eight senior officials of Union Carbide at the time of the leak have been convicted of “causing death by negligence,” a crime that carries a maximum sentence of two years. Nobody has tried to find out why and how the culpable homicide, which carries a longer sentence, was watered down. Nobody knows of the deals cut to keep this information in wraps.
Warren M. Anderson, the then chairman of Union Carbide, and seven other Carbide officials, had compromised on safety standards of the fertilizer plant with the blessings of our ruling elite.
Anderson came to India after the disaster .He was arrested and released on bail. The authorities failed to get him extradited to India for the trial.
Keshub Mahindra, an Indian industrialist, who was then chairman of Union Carbide India, was also convicted, along with other Indian officials at the plant.
The verdict is yet another disturbing reminder that the poor don't matter in India.
The CBI botched up the case to the disadvantage of the victims. Union Carbide has paid $470 million to settle victims’ claims. This money has created new disparities and an illusion of economic growth in once laid back city.
Like the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Bhopal victims cough. The children born after the tragedy have deformed limbs and stunted growth. They are being treated in the hospital that has come up after the tragedy.
Hameeda Bi and many other survivors expected an exemplary punishment. Instead the court made the world’s worst industrial disaster look like a traffic accident. ‘We don’t count. The convicts should have been given death’, she lamented.
Raj Kumar Keswani, a Bhopal-based journalist, cried hoarse for two years before the tragedy, saying the Union Carbide plant had lax safety procedures and that the city was "sitting on a volcano". Instead of acting the authorities chose to ignore the series of articles on the Carbide plant. He moved court and worked the politicians, all chose to shoo him away.
After the tragedy he challenged the government, accusing it of a sell-out to Union Carbide .The Indian government had sued the company for $3bn but settled for 15 percent of the amount.
The accident site in the middle of Bhopal was given back to the state government. Dow absorbed Union Carbide in 2001 and victims’ groups are trying to get Dow to clean up the site.
