All the seven accused of causing death of over 15,000 people were convicted but escaped with a light punishment of two years in jail.
Monday’s delayed verdict in the Bhopal gas tragedy case of 1984 left families of victims fuming.
All the seven accused of causing death of over 15,000 people were convicted but escaped with a light punishment of two years in jail. Adding insult to injury, 85-year-old Keshub Mahendra, chairman of Mahindra and Mahindra and former chairman of Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), Vijay Gokhale, former managing director, Kishore Kamdar, former vice-president, JN Mukund, former works manager, SP Choudhary ex-production manager, KV Shetty, ex-plant superintendent, and SI Qureshi, ex-production assistant, got bail soon after the sentence was pronounced and walked free.
The eighth accused, RB Roy Choudhary, former assistant working manager, had died in January 1998.
Prime accused, former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson, who was arrested a few days after the disaster but almost immediately released on bail on the promise that he would return to India, has never bothered.
So, how did the accused manage to escape with such a light punishment and in Anderson’s case, no punishment at all?
Critics argue CBI, which took over the case on December 6, was ill-equipped to probe a disaster of such a magnitude. It allowed Anderson to escape in 1984, releasing him on a bond of $2,000 after he promised to return for trial. He never showed up.
“Our extradition request [to the US government] remains unexecuted,” a CBI spokesperson said.
The agency took three long years to prepare a charge sheet in the case. The charge sheet was finally filed on December 1, two days before the third anniversary of the disaster in 1987.
If this was not enough, Union Carbide Eastern (UCE), Hong Kong, a wholly owned subsidiary of Union Carbide Corporation registered in Delaware, US, deregistered itself in 1992. It reopened as Union Carbide Asia and Union Carbide Asia Pacific. Instead of following the assets of the company, CBI gave up on prosecution of UCE saying “they cannot prosecute a company that has deregistered itself”.
In September 1996, the Supreme Court diluted the criminal charges against UCIL’s Indian officials saying the culpability lay with UCC, delivering a bigger blow to the families of victims.
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