Children of Bhopal gas victims

i worked with a guy who actualy claimed union carbide did nothing wrong.we are a blemish on a great planet.

8 Former Executives Guilty in ’84 Bhopal Chemical Leak

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/world/asia/08bhopal.html?_r=1

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/06/08/world/BHOPAL/BHOPAL-popup.jpg

Photo: Prakash Hatvalne/Associated Press: A partially blind victim of the Union Carbide leak waited Monday for a verdict with other victims outside the court in Bhopal.

The New York Times

June 7, 2010

8 Former Executives Guilty in ’84 Bhopal Chemical Leak

By LYDIA POLGREEN and HARI KUMAR

Correction Appended

NEW DELHI — More than 25 years after a plume of fatal toxic gas from an American-owned chemical plant wafted over the slumbering city of Bhopal, eight former executives of the company’s Indian subsidiary — including one who has since died — were convicted Monday of negligence. The seven surviving defendants were sentenced to two years in prison and fined 100,000 rupees, or $2,100.

They were the first criminal convictions from the leak at the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, a central Indian city. The leak killed 3,000 people almost instantly, and thousands more died later from the aftereffects of the toxic gas, an ingredient in pesticides the plant produced.

Victims groups and activists, who had sought more serious charges, criticized the verdict. Death by negligence is most frequently used in deaths involving car accidents, they said. It carries a maximum two-year sentence.

Satinath Sarangi, an advocate for the victims, characterized the verdict as “the world’s worst industrial disaster reduced to a traffic accident.”

The defendants, all Indian citizens, were senior officials of the company at the time of the leak, India’s deadliest industrial disaster. The accident took place in December 1984 when a poisonous gas called methyl isocyanate leaked in the plant and spread over nearby slums.

The eight convictions were announced after a bitter quarter-century-long court battle. Initially the defendants were charged with culpable homicide, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years, but India’s Supreme Court reduced the charges.

Indian authorities tried unsuccessfully to prosecute Warren M. Anderson, chairman of Union Carbide at the time of the leak. Mr. Anderson, now nearly 90, came to India after the disaster and was briefly arrested, then released on bail. His bail expired years ago and he is considered an absconder by Indian courts.

Keshub Mahindra, an Indian industrialist who was then chairman of Union Carbide India, the subsidiary, was convicted along with seven others.

Activists and gas victims swarmed to the courtroom to hear the judgment. Hameeda Bi, whose granddaughter died 20 days after the gas leak, said that the sentence had been much too light and that the defendants should have received life sentences.

“They killed thousands of people, and we fought for justice for 25 years,” Ms. Bi said.

About 2,000 more deaths were attributed to the gas leak, and government records indicate that 578,000 people were affected. Union Carbide paid a $470 million settlement, with each victim getting an average of $550.

Indian courts are notoriously slow. Jam-packed dockets and a shortage of judges can leave criminal cases hanging for years, or even decades. High-profile cases often drag on for even longer, as skilled lawyers file endless motions and continuances while defendants remain out on bail.

The accident site, in the middle of Bhopal, was given back to the state government. It still has 425 tons of hazardous waste that has yet to be cleared. Union Carbide was bought by Dow Chemical Company in 2001, and activists are seeking to get Dow to clean up the site.

The Bhopal case has taken on new significance in recent months as India’s Parliament has been debating a law capping liability for foreign nuclear power companies operating in India. The law is essential to the civil nuclear technology agreement between India and the United States that brought India into the nuclear mainstream, despite its refusal to sign on to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The law would cap foreign companies’ liability at little more than $100 million in the event of a disaster.

Abdul Jabbar, an activist who survived the gas leak, said the sentence would encourage corporate impunity. “This judgment will not have any deterring impact on big companies,” he said. “In fact it will tell them that you can get out of it so easily.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 18, 2010

Because of an editing error, an article on June 8 about the convictions of eight former executives of a Union Carbide subsidiary in the 1984 chemical leak that killed thousands of people in Bhopal, India, misidentified, in some editions, the source of pressure for a cleanup of the accident site by the Dow Chemical Company, which bought Union Carbide in 2001. Environmental activists — not the Indian government — are continuing to press for the cleanup of 425 tons of hazardous waste.

Correction: June 7, 2010

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article incorrectly named Warren M. Anderson, a former chairman of Union Carbide, as one of the executives found guilty. It also misstated the number of people convicted and referred imprecisely to their employer. They were employees of Union Carbide India Limited, a subsidiary of Union Carbide.

Awful and sad. I hope the poison being breathed in the gulf does not produce similar birth defects.

This is so sad !

This is SO important a story. I hope everyone who comes across this, thanks to you, shares it with everyone else.

Sadness can't begin to explain what I am feeling. Make that utter despair.

Words fail me in relaying my sorrow and outrage about this. But I will say that this should be on TV. Vanguard needs to cover this.