On 40th Anniversary of Bhopal Gas Tragedy, victims are still deprived of their due

Rights bodies moving to supreme court for additional compensation for diseased

BHOPAL: On December 3, 2024, it will be forty years since the lethal Methyl ISO-Cyanate gas spewed out from the Pesticide-manufacturing plant of American Transnational Union Carbide Corporation on the outskirts of Bhopal, killing thousands and maiming lakhs.

For the gas victims of the city, the last forty years were full of ups and downs – and more downs than ups at that. A closure has been eluding the tragedy.

The list of disappointments the gas victims have faced is endless. They were hopeful that the chemical waste lying on the premises of the defunct UCC plant would be destroyed. There was the hope that those held guilty for raining death on the city will get stiff punishment. There was the hope that there would be vast improvement in the functioning of the BMHRC – a dedicated hospital for the gas victims - after its takeover by the Government of India. And there was the hope that the gas hit would get higher compensation.

But all these hopes remain unfulfilled. The chemical waste remains where it was, the culprits of the gas disaster got away with a light punishment--which too was not executed and the BMHRC continues to witness exodus of top doctors.

On March 14, 2023, the Supreme Court dismissed a curative petition filed by the Union Government seeking additional compensation for the gas victims. The petition was filed in 2010, 26 years after the tragedy.

The curative petition was filed in December 2010, two decades after the settlement. The petition sought additional funds of over ₹7,400 crores from the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), now owned by Dow Chemicals. The Studies made by Greenpeace and several agencies of India and abroad on soil, groundwater, well water and vegetable samples collected from the residential areas around the UCC plant show contamination with a range of toxic heavy metals and chemical compounds.

A study found that the concentration of mercury in a soil sample was 6000 times higher than the safe level! The water of more than 100 tube wells in the area has been declared unfit for human consumption. The source of gradual poisoning of the soil, water and vegetation in the area is the 350 MTs of lethal chemical waste lying on the UCC premises. The waste has been seeping into the soil and then spreading horizontally over the last 40 years. All attempts to dispose of the waste have failed.

As for punishment to the culprits of the gas tragedy, after a legal battle that lasted for more than 15 years, Keshub Mahindra, chairman of UCC India Limited and seven others were held guilty for 'causing death due to negligence' and sentenced to 2 years' imprisonment each by a Bhopal court. However, they were bailed out within hours. That was in June 2010. Hopes were again aroused when, in August 2010, the Supreme Court admitted a Curative petition filed by the prosecuting agency CBI and agreed to revisit its own judgment of 1996, that had diluted the charges against the UCC officials from 'culpable homicide not amounting to murder' (that carries a jail term of up to 10 years) to 'causing death due to negligence' under which the convict can be sentenced to a maximum of 2 years in jail. However, in a severe jolt to the gas victims and their organisations, the Apex Court, on May 11, 2011, threw out the petition.

And of course, the villain-in-chief of the world's worst industrial disaster--Warren Anderson, the then chairman of the Union Carbide Corporation--after enjoying a quiet retirement in the US, passed away at a New York clinic in September 2013 at the age of 92. He never faced trial and the pleas for his extradition were never taken seriously by the government of India. Way back in 2002, Shakti Bhatt, a journalist of "India Abroad" newspaper located Anderson's house in New York without much effort. This, when his address was declared "unknown" by both the Indian and US governments.

The third issue on which gas victims are disappointed and angry is that of compensation. Under an out-of-court settlement in 1989, the UCC had agreed to pay a compensation of 470 million dollars for the gas victims. The amount was arrived at on the basis of the casualty figures presented by the Madhya Pradesh government. The government had claimed that 3000 persons had died and 1,02,000 had suffered injuries in the disaster.

However, the gas survivor organisations argue that the actual figures were much higher. On the basis of the cases decided by the gas compensation courts, the number of deaths is 15,274 and the number of injured is 5.73 lakhs. In 2010, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court seeking enhancement of compensation. The petition was dismissed last year. And despite repeated pleas by the gas victim bodies, neither the state nor the Central government has cared to correct the figures of the dead and injured in the petition.

A long-standing grievance of the gas victims has been that neither the American government nor the institutions of people’s representatives that country care to mourn the death of thousands nor did anything to secure just and adequate compensation to them.

Their another regret is that the Government of India has deprived them of their legal right to secure compensation from the Union Carbide by declaring itself as their sole legal representative.

Meanwhile, organizations of gas victims announced on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the tragedy that they have moved a fresh plea in the top court seeking additional compensation for victims suffering from cancer and fatal kidney diseases. (IPA Service)

By L S Herdenia