The
famed city of King Bhoja perhaps named
Bhojpal after the king and the dam ("pal") constructed by him, slowly
fell to obscurity, and by the early 18th
century Bhopal was a small village in the local Gond kingdom. The present
capital of Madhya Pradesh is not as famous as many other cities are – in 1969,
a factory to produce pesticide Sevin,
using methyl isocyanate (MIC) as an intermediate was started – and in
hindsight this has caused untold woes and tribulations to thousands of poor
Indian citizens. … … before we proceed,
can you (or would you like) to recognize the actor or more the role performed
in that film ‘A Prayer for Rain’.
Tragedy
struck 34 years ago - during the night of December 2–3, 1984: water entered Tank E610 containing 42 tons of
MIC. The resulting exothermic reaction increased the temperature inside the
tank to over200 °C (392 °F) and raised the pressure. About 30 metric tons of
methyl isocyanate (MIC) escaped from the tank into the atmosphere in 45 to 60
minutes. The gases were blown by southeasterly winds over Bhopal – and that is
the Bhopal disaster, a gas leak considered one of the world's worst
industrial catastrophes. Estimates vary
on the death toll. The official immediate death toll was 2,259 and the
government of Madhya Pradesh confirmed a
total of 3,787 deaths related to the gas release. A government affidavit in 2006 stated the
leak caused 558,125 injuries including 38,478 temporary partial and
approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries.
His death, which was
not announced by his family, confirmed
from public records – brought no tears
miles away in India – for that ghastly incident. Anderson was born in New York in 1921, to
Swedish immigrants who lived in the borough's Bay Ridge section. They named him
for Warren G Harding, who was the president at the time. After graduating in 1942, he enlisted in the
Navy and trained to be a fighter pilot, but never saw combat. After his
discharge, he made the rounds of chemical companies and took the first job
offered him - by Union Carbide. He climbed the corporate ladder rapidly and
ruled over an empire with 700 plants in more than three dozen countries. Then
came Bhopal.
The
night of Dec 2, 1984 would rankle as a black day in the annals of Indian
history. Over 3000 died that night
itself ; nearly 12000 died subsequently and thousands maimed due to diseases induced by methyl-isocyanate
that tank 610 of Union Carbide spewed
out some 27 tonnes of a poisonous asphyxiating gas from. The plant installed in 1969 was to produce a
cheap pesticide ‘sevin’ which ironically killed human lives. More than 3 decades
since that night of terror and death in Bhopal, which saw a cloud of deadly
gases explode out of a faulty tank in a
pesticide factory and silently spread into the homes of sleeping people
– there are still people affected by the world’s worst industrial disaster
ever. Many who breathed the highly toxic
cocktail that night suffered a horrible death with multiple organ failure.
Those who survived have suffered multiple diseases in the decades that were to
come.
Following the
disaster, there was an international outcry for relief for the victims and
punishment to those responsible for the gas leakage. The pesticide plant from
where the gas leaked belonged to Union Carbide India, a subsidiary of the
US-based Union Carbide Company. They were asked to pay compensation and arrange
for medical treatment. The matter immediately got embroiled in legal
controversies. Thus began a long and painful struggle of the victims for
compensation, medical attention and rehabilitation that has spluttered along
for a quarter century. In February 1989,
the Supreme Court announced that it was approving a settlement for Bhopal
victims under which Union Carbide agreed to pay measly Rs.713 crore for
compensation to victims, while the government agreed to drop all criminal cases
against it. However, due to intense public shock and anger at letting off the
culprits, the court agreed to reopen the criminal cases in 1991. Two
installments of compensation — of up to Rs 25,000 each — were given to the injured, one in 1994 and
the next in 2004. Years later Union Carbide announced merger with US-based
Dow Chemicals and Union Carbide refused to take responsibility for its
liability.
There
was no redemption for Warren M. Anderson — accused no. 1 in the criminal case
pertaining to the Bhopal gas tragedy — in life. Decades later in 2014, it seemed there was
none in death. Hearing of his death, a full one month after he passed away at a
nursing home in Vero Beach, Florida, on September 29, survivors of the Bhopal
gas tragedy assembled outside the now-defunct Union Carbide factory and placed
a large portrait of him. Then, one by one, they spat at the photograph. With
his death, the struggle to get the former CEO of Union Carbide extradited hit a dead end. Anderson was the chief
executive officer of the UCC, owner of Union Carbide India Ltd., which ran the
plant.
India
Today, Indian Express, The Hindu and
other mainline media reported that the accused was allowed to go out of the
country by the then rulers, Congress Govt. Four days after that deadly gas leak at Union Carbide's plant in
Bhopal killed thousands in 1984, the company's chairman, Warren Anderson, was
arrested on his arrival in the capital of Madhya Pradesh. But after being held
under house arrest for only a few hours, Anderson posted bail and quickly left
the country, never returning to face trial. Several reports have suggested that
the government of PM Rajiv Gandhi was pressured by the US to let Anderson go.
Senior Congress leader Arjun Singh, who was then the chief minister of MP,
wrote in his autobiography A Grain of Sand in the Hourglass of Time that home
secretary R.D. Pradhan called him "on the instructions of the then Union
home minister P.V. Narasimha Rao".
India today further reported that : within hours, he was granted bail
and the same police force six hours later escorted Anderson out of the city in
a blue government vehicle. Clearly,
someone was working overtime to save Anderson. And not just in Bhopal, even in
Delhi the former chairman of Union Carbide had a free run. The man responsible
for the death of thousands was spotted in front of Parliament in the capital. As
he sat on a white Ambassador car, there was no sign of any remorse or tension
on his face. Anderson finally left Delhi on December 7 and never returned. All
efforts to bring him back to face trial in the case since then failed ~ and he
died. According
to NY Times, his death passed almost unnoticed until an article appeared in
Vero Beach 32963, the weekly newspaper of the Vero Beach barrier island.
Web
searches reveal that wayback in 1985, President Reagan commuted the sentences of 13 people who had
been in prison for violations of Federal laws. One was a boyhood friend of
Prime Minister of India, Adil Shahryar, who was serving 35 years for setting
off a firebomb, fraud and other violations in Florida. Mr. Reagan signed the
clemency papers June 11, the day Mr. Gandhi arrived in Washington for a visit
with the President. Unlike other Presidential papers, grants of clemency are
not routinely published by the White House and made available to the press,
accounting for the action's lack of notice. The Shahryar commutation was
reported in the Indian press and confirmed by the White House press office,
which referred a caller to the Justice Department for comment. A department
spokesman, Joseph Krovisky, said he could not go beyond the text of the
official clemency grant, which stated that Mr. Shahryar, then in the Federal
penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan., would not have been eligible for parole
until 1991.
The victims sadly
continued to see failures. The lawsuit
said Dow Chemicals, which in 2001 bought over Union Carbide Corporation (UCC),
should pay for the cleaning of the site and adjoining areas and for the damage
to the health and property of the people still living around the factory. The case filed in 1999 —Bano v Union Carbide in district court of
Manhattan, New York was dismissed in 2003 on the grounds of statute of limitation. Same tear
Janki Bai Sahu v Union Carbide
and Warren Anderson was filed in same district court by 17 survivors living
near the defunct Union Carbide factory in Bhopal. Case sought damages, medical monitoring of
patients affected by soil and drinking water contamination. In 2005, Manhattan district court gave a summary judgement in favour of UCC against which
appeal was filed again.
In June 2012, Court ruled in favour of the defendants,
dismissing all claims of their liability and participation in the 1984 Bhopal
gas leak; UCC, parent company of Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) which
operated the pesticide plant in Bhopal, filed an application demanding the
dismissal of the suit. The order delivered
by Keenan was the fourth dismissal of this case in 13 years. It was reported that Keenan in the written opinion
stated that even when viewing the evidence in the most favourable light for the
plaintiffs, UCC is not directly liable, nor liable as an agent of UCIL, nor
liable under a veil-piercing analysis.
UCC released a
statement after this order which said that after the 1984 disaster, UCIL
“obtained permission from the government to conduct clean-up work at the site.”
Ten years later, Union Carbide sold its stake in the Indian unit, which later
changed its name to Eveready Industries India Ltd. Union Carbide also claimed that in 1998 the state of Madhya Pradesh took
over the responsibility for the site and remediation efforts.
Thus ended the sordid
saga of Bhopal tragedy. .. .. the man at the start is Martin Sheen playing the
criminal Warren Anderson in the film - A
Prayer for Rain, a 2014 historical drama
film set amidst the Bhopal disaster. It was directed by Ravi Kumar and featured Martin Sheen, Mischa
Barton, Kal Penn, Rajpal Yadav, Tannishtha Chatterjee, and Fagun Thakrar in
important roles. The film made a market screening at the 2013 Cannes Film
Festival. The film received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the actors'
portrayal of their respective characters but found the film underwhelming. However those organisations fighting for the rights of the
victims of the tragedy blamed the film for presenting the facts in a distorted
manner. The Madhya Pradesh
government exempted the film from paying tax.
Homage to the victims
of Bhopal tragedy and truth !
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
2nd Dec
2018.
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