‘Half a million were exposed to lethal gas in Bhopal tragedy’

The fresh extradition move comes at a time when global human rights violation barometer Amnesty International has issued a report saying, “Bhopal is not just a human rights tragedy from the last century — it is a human rights travesty today.”

Though the number of people who have been exposed to 54,000 pounds of lethal Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) and 26,000 pounds of reaction products remains a matter of dispute, Amnesty said around half a million people were exposed to the ill effects of gas.
Between 7,000 and 10,000 people died in the immediate aftermath and a further 15,000 over the next 20 years of the holocaust.

Even now the contaminated site has not been cleaned up, the leak and its impact have not been properly investigated and more than 1,00,000 people continue to suffer from health problems without medical care, it revealed.

Till now, Union Carbide hasn’t disclosed the reaction products that leaked with MIC, hampering efforts to treat victims.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on February 28 issued notices to Dow Chemicals and other companies seeking increase in the compensation amount from Rs750 crore to Rs7,000 crore.

A bench headed by Chief Justice SH Kapadia has also issued notices on a CBI petition questioning the court’s 1996 judgment that mellowed down the charge from culpable homicide not amounting to murder (sentence up to 10 years) to merely negligence which provides a maximum sentence of two years.