Bhopal:
India's anger over the verdict in the Bhopal Gas Tragedy is provoked partly by the fact that the gas leak at the Union Carbide Plant in Bhopal was, from all accounts, inevitable.
For three years before the tragedy that would kill 20,000 people unleashed itself upon Bhopal, local journalist Rajkumar Keswani had been warning that the Carbide plant was unsafe and that its management was aware of this.
"On 5th Oct, 1982, there was a small leak. People actually had to run. It didn't alarm the local administration or the Carbide management. I had been writing since September '82...and warning them. I had said, 'Please save the city.' In another article in October that year, I wrote 'Bhopal Sitting on a Volcano.' There was no reaction."
The writing was also plastered on the walls of the Carbide plant. In 1981, a gas leak had killed one worker. In 1982, 25 workers were hospitalized after another gas leak. Two years later, Union Carbide sent its US experts for a safety audit of the Bhopal plant. The team discovered 30 hazard spots - half of these were located in the section where the leak in 1984 would choke an entire city. Dangerous amounts of water entered a tank containing methyl isocyanate gas. The chemical reaction forced toxic fumes to vent, choking and strangling thousands of people.
Last week's verdict by a local court sentenced seven Indian former executives of Union Carbide to two years in jail for criminal negligence. They have been granted bail.
The verdict has forced India to take a long hard look at the disaster that was forced upon Bhopal, and those behind it.
CBI officials who handled the investigation against Carbide have said emphatically that they had enough evidence to prove that the company deliberately sacrificed the safety of its workers in Bhopal.
A former joint director, G Ramachandran, told NDTV that's what led the CBI to charge Carbide and its executives with culpable homicide not amounting to murder. In 1996, the Supreme Court accepted a plea from the accused to reduce those charges to criminal negligence which comes with a sentence of two years in jail.
First Union Carbide, and then its new owners, Dow Chemicals, have always branded the Bhopal leak as a terrible accident.
Boosted perhaps by the public outrage over last week's verdict, activists who've been fighting for the victims of the Carbide leak for 25 years say they will file a petition in the Supreme Court challenging its decision to reduce the charges against Carbide.
What will be crucial for them is whether the CBI will back them - by supporting what its own officers have shared in the last few days.
For three years before the tragedy that would kill 20,000 people unleashed itself upon Bhopal, local journalist Rajkumar Keswani had been warning that the Carbide plant was unsafe and that its management was aware of this.
"On 5th Oct, 1982, there was a small leak. People actually had to run. It didn't alarm the local administration or the Carbide management. I had been writing since September '82...and warning them. I had said, 'Please save the city.' In another article in October that year, I wrote 'Bhopal Sitting on a Volcano.' There was no reaction."
The writing was also plastered on the walls of the Carbide plant. In 1981, a gas leak had killed one worker. In 1982, 25 workers were hospitalized after another gas leak. Two years later, Union Carbide sent its US experts for a safety audit of the Bhopal plant. The team discovered 30 hazard spots - half of these were located in the section where the leak in 1984 would choke an entire city. Dangerous amounts of water entered a tank containing methyl isocyanate gas. The chemical reaction forced toxic fumes to vent, choking and strangling thousands of people.
Last week's verdict by a local court sentenced seven Indian former executives of Union Carbide to two years in jail for criminal negligence. They have been granted bail.
The verdict has forced India to take a long hard look at the disaster that was forced upon Bhopal, and those behind it.
CBI officials who handled the investigation against Carbide have said emphatically that they had enough evidence to prove that the company deliberately sacrificed the safety of its workers in Bhopal.
A former joint director, G Ramachandran, told NDTV that's what led the CBI to charge Carbide and its executives with culpable homicide not amounting to murder. In 1996, the Supreme Court accepted a plea from the accused to reduce those charges to criminal negligence which comes with a sentence of two years in jail.
First Union Carbide, and then its new owners, Dow Chemicals, have always branded the Bhopal leak as a terrible accident.
Boosted perhaps by the public outrage over last week's verdict, activists who've been fighting for the victims of the Carbide leak for 25 years say they will file a petition in the Supreme Court challenging its decision to reduce the charges against Carbide.
What will be crucial for them is whether the CBI will back them - by supporting what its own officers have shared in the last few days.
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