Bhopal verdict causes outrage

NEW DEHLI: India said on Tuesday that the case against the absconding ex-boss of chemical group Union Carbide, which was blamed for the 1984 Bhopal disaster, was still open amid outrage over the sentencing of the culprits.

American former CEO Warren Anderson was arrested in India after the accident, which killed tens of thousands of people, but he then fled the country.

Requests for his extradition were turned down by US authorities. He, like the local managers of Union Carbide’s subsidiary in India, faced charges of criminal negligence. Seven of the local managers were finally convicted on Monday, while Anderson was named as an absconder.

Amid anger in India about the perceived leniency of the sentences given to the Indian managers -- two years in prison pending appeal -- Anderson has again become a target and a lightning rod for a general feeling of injustice.

“As far as Anderson is concerned, the case is not closed,” Indian Law Minister Veerappa Moily said.

“There is one person here who has not responded to the summons or replied to the charges. He has absconded and was declared a proclaimed offender,” he told the Press Trust of India.

Indian politicians, campaigners and newspapers vented outrage at the lenient prison terms handed to those found guilty for the accident, which saw a cloud of toxic gas poison the slums surrounding the factory in the central Indian city.

Scorn was heaped on the 25-year delay in the convictions and fingers were pointed at Anderson in a slew of news reports and during chat shows on cable television.

The prosecution argued in the Bhopal court that there were design defects in the factory as well as other criminally negligent operational practices that were known to management but ignored for commercial reasons.

Anderson lives in suburban New York, and the Hindustan Times blamed the Indian government for allowing him “to live a life of ease far away in the US while the victims struggle from day to day”.

The ageing former executive is unlikely to ever return to India and no one in New Delhi expects an extradition to be approved, so there appears little chance of him answering the charges in an Indian court.

The investigator who handled the Bhopal case from 1984 to 1995, B.R Lall, said he was instructed not to press for the extradition of Anderson by the ministry of external affairs, The Express newspaper reported.

Monday’s convictions do not matter because these were foot-soldiers,” he was quoted as saying.

In a statement Monday, the company said the appropriate people had faced trial, arguing that US executives were not involved in the day-to-day running of their majority-owned subsidiary, Union Carbide India Ltd.

Robert Blake, the US assistant secretary of state for South Asia, told reporters in Washington that he didn’t “expect this verdict to reopen any new inquiries or anything like that.”

Published in the Express Tribune, June 9^th, 2010.