New Delhi:
Sameena, age 29, is desperate for help. When she arrived at the Bhopal Memorial Hospital, she hoped that she was guaranteed the assistance she needs for her condition - renal failure.
She is one of the thousands of people who live in Bhopal and pay the price for the corporate negligence that hurtled the city into the world's biggest industrial disaster in 1984. A gas leak from the Union Carbide plant poisoned Bhopal. Twenty thousand people have died. Others, like Sameena, are living reminders that 25 years later, Bhopal's present its loaded with its past.
Sameena has the papers that establish her medical problems are caused by the gas tragedy. But, at the hospital, set up by Union Carbide to treat victims, nobody has the time to attend to her.
Sameena's brother, Nafees, reveals, "They told us the machine needed is not free. We'll call you another time. They never called. This hospital treats only private patients who can make it rich." That charge is echoed by many other patients. "This is totally baseless... 90 per cent of the patients are gas victims," counters the hospital's Director, Dr K K Maudar.
We try to talk to patients who seem more privileged. Then, hospital authorities get into an argument with us, and insist on escorting us for the rest of our tour. They refuse to show us the hospital's list of patients - a document that should list the number of victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy that are being treated here.
What we do see, clearly, is a portrait in the corridors of Justice A M Ahmadi. He is not a popular man among the surviving victims in Bhopal. He rescued Carbide in 1994. Two years after a Bhopal judge ordered that Union Carbide's properties should be attached to court because their executives were ignoring court summons, Ahmadi reversed that decision. The company was allowed to sell its properties. The agreement was that the money would be used to set up a trust and a 500-bed hospital which would treat victims of the tragedy at no cost to them.
In 1996, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he accepted a plea from Carbide executives to reduce the charges against them for their role in the 1984 tragedy to criminal negligence - a crime covered by a maximum sentence of two years. The original charges - pressed by the CBI - accused them of culpable homicide not amounting to murder which carries a sentence of 10 years.
Two years after that, in 1998, Justice Ahmadi became the chairman of the hospital trust for life. Ahmadi claims the Supreme Court asked him to chair it.
But activists say this is misleading... the appointment was made by the Trust constituted by Union Carbide. This, they argue is another example of collusion among Carbide and those who were powerful and influential.
As evidence, they say a hospital set up for victims has become a super specialty medical facility for the rich instead.
She is one of the thousands of people who live in Bhopal and pay the price for the corporate negligence that hurtled the city into the world's biggest industrial disaster in 1984. A gas leak from the Union Carbide plant poisoned Bhopal. Twenty thousand people have died. Others, like Sameena, are living reminders that 25 years later, Bhopal's present its loaded with its past.
Sameena has the papers that establish her medical problems are caused by the gas tragedy. But, at the hospital, set up by Union Carbide to treat victims, nobody has the time to attend to her.
Sameena's brother, Nafees, reveals, "They told us the machine needed is not free. We'll call you another time. They never called. This hospital treats only private patients who can make it rich." That charge is echoed by many other patients. "This is totally baseless... 90 per cent of the patients are gas victims," counters the hospital's Director, Dr K K Maudar.
We try to talk to patients who seem more privileged. Then, hospital authorities get into an argument with us, and insist on escorting us for the rest of our tour. They refuse to show us the hospital's list of patients - a document that should list the number of victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy that are being treated here.
What we do see, clearly, is a portrait in the corridors of Justice A M Ahmadi. He is not a popular man among the surviving victims in Bhopal. He rescued Carbide in 1994. Two years after a Bhopal judge ordered that Union Carbide's properties should be attached to court because their executives were ignoring court summons, Ahmadi reversed that decision. The company was allowed to sell its properties. The agreement was that the money would be used to set up a trust and a 500-bed hospital which would treat victims of the tragedy at no cost to them.
In 1996, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he accepted a plea from Carbide executives to reduce the charges against them for their role in the 1984 tragedy to criminal negligence - a crime covered by a maximum sentence of two years. The original charges - pressed by the CBI - accused them of culpable homicide not amounting to murder which carries a sentence of 10 years.
Two years after that, in 1998, Justice Ahmadi became the chairman of the hospital trust for life. Ahmadi claims the Supreme Court asked him to chair it.
But activists say this is misleading... the appointment was made by the Trust constituted by Union Carbide. This, they argue is another example of collusion among Carbide and those who were powerful and influential.
As evidence, they say a hospital set up for victims has become a super specialty medical facility for the rich instead.
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