RIGHTS-INDIA: Bhopal Victims Score a Court Victory

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Aug 28 2002 (IPS) - A court in Bhopal city, site of the world’s worst industrial disaster in 1984, dismissed Wednesday a plea by India’s central government to dilute to negligence the culpable homicide charges against the chairman of the company whose plant spewed deadly gases 18 years ago.

The pesticide factory was owned by the then Union Carbide company, whose chairman at the time, Warren Anderson, is facing charges for culpable homicide.

The court’s verdict will bring cheer to activist groups campaigning to get justice for the survivors of the tragedy, which instantly killed 3,000 people as a poisonous cloud of cyanide containing gas leaked out of Union Carbide’s factory in the wee hours of Dec. 3, 1984.

Several of these groups are attending the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, in a continuing bid to draw world attention to the plight of some 500,000 people still maimed by what effectively was the worst case of gassing since the First World War.

Before leaving for Johannesburg, survivor Rasheed Bi said she planned to expose collusion by the Indian government with Dow Corning — which now owns Union Carbide’s assets but refuses to be responsible for its liabilities in Bhopal — for fear that the company could influence future U.S. investment in India.

Said fellow activist Satinath Sarangi of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action (BGIA): “In the context of the WSSD, the United States has to be the only axis of evil.”

“Its role in protecting environmental criminals, known polluters like Dow Carbide, and arm-twisting India into ending the criminal proceedings against those responsible for the Bhopal disaster exposes the U.S. government’s priorities as anti-planet,” he argued.

Sarangi and Bi have seen Indian officials of Union Carbide getting the charges against them diluted and were determined not to let Anderson get away.

Bi lost five members of her immediate family to cancer and they are listed among 20,000 people whose deaths have been directly linked to the poison cloud in Bhopal.

What went against Andersen was the fact he has never stood trial and he has been declared an ‘absconder,’ with his whereabouts unknown though he owns a beach house in Florida.

The judge at Bhopal observed that Andersen never applied in court for reduced charges, confident of leaving that to India’s premier sleuthing agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

After discussions with three central government ministers in New Delhi in July, Sarangi and Bi declared that they were convinced that the “Indian government has received instructions from its masters in Washington that Dow, which has assets and investments in India and could be held liable, should be let off the hook.”

Sarangi said if the Bhopal court rejects the government’s plea for dilution of the case against Andersen, the next step would be to press for Andersen’s extradition to India to face trial since the existing extradition treaty between India and the United States covers homicide but not negligence.

Conviction on homicide charges could get Andersen 20 years in jail while negligence attracts a maximum of two years under Indian law.

Scientists have established that had refrigeration units at the Union Carbide’s plant not been shut off as an economy measure to save about 50 U.S. dollars per day, the runaway reaction in its storage tanks full of deadly methyl-isocyanate may never have occurred or would have been retarded.

Critics say various Indian governments appear to have colluded with Union Carbide in thinly disguised cover-up, and in watering down the original suit for 15 billion dollars, which the Andersen had publicly committed to pay right after the tragedy.

In fact, the government helped Union Carbide to convert 15 tonnes of methyl isocyanate — still remaining in its tanks after the tragedy — into pesticides rather than have it neutralised.

This had resulted in a panic exodus from Bhopal on Dec. 16, 1984, with many people not daring to return for over a month.

After arrogating to itself the right to represent the victims, the central government filed a weak claim for three billion dollars and collected 470 million dollars in an out-of-court settlement.

Very little of that money reached the victims. Bi, for instance, never got more than 500 dollars.

Union Carbide came out of it all unscathed. At a time when it had an annual revenue of eight billion dollars, it had to cough up just 70 million dollars for the final settlement. It had collected more than 200 million dollars as insurance and already set aside 200 million dollars under court instructions.

Andersen was briefly arrested in Bhopal on charges of culpable homicide, criminal conspiracy and other serious offences along with several other Indian executives of the company soon after the disaster. They were granted bail on the same day.

He then quietly flew back to the United States, ignoring summons to face trial. He left behind a scene in which doctors had little clue as to what they were supposed to treat, having little knowledge or experience of the poisoning by methyl isocyanate, except what was available in history books on the First World War.

Many victims died the same horrible deaths of soldiers in that war, while the survivors continue to suffer from a host maladies including lung fibrosis, impaired vision, asthma and neurological disorders.

But the worst may be yet to come because researchers have already turned up evidence of chromosomal aberrations among exposed people, posing the strong likelihood of increasing congenital malformations in future generations.

Bi and Sarangi said some 25 research projects commissioned by the government were inexplicably wound up in 1994 because of a policy of hushing up the findings. “But you just have to see babies that are born in Bhopal these days – they have terrible deformations or marks all over their bodies,” said Bi.

R Srinivasamurthy of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience here says there has been growing incidence of psychological problems among survivors, most of whom have no access to psychiatric treatment.

“Entire families live in isolation and it is difficult to get the younger women married off because of the widespread fear that the children they have would be deformed,” Srinivasamurthy said.