| 36521 |
abstract |
In June 2010, over 25 years after the massive gas leak which killed thousands at a
chemical plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, an Indian court finally handed down sentences
following successful criminal prosecutions related to the disaster. After the original
charges of culpable homicide had been watered down, seven senior managers working
at the Bhopal plant in 1984 were found guilty of death by neglect (an eighth so charged
had died during the legal process), given two year prison sentences and fined the
equivalent of approximately USD2,100. Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL), then a subsidiary
of the American company Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and since 1995 of Eveready
Industries India Ltd (EIIL), was fined USD11,000. All those found guilty were Indian
nationals but Warren Anderson, American CEO of UCC at the time of the gas leak, UCC
itself and Union Carbide Eastern (UCE), another subsidiary of UCC with oversight over
UCIL, could not be considered for trial in their absence: the court labelled these
three named defendants ‘absconders’.
From some viewpoints, the convictions may represent justice, albeit of a limited kind.
It is certainly exceptional for any senior manager to receive a custodial sentence
following occupational deaths or environmental damage. In a whole series of ways,
however, the verdict merely represents another in a long series of instances of justice
denied. Hazra Bee, of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, responded
to the sentences by stating “We feel outraged and betrayed. This is not justice. This
is a travesty of justice … the paltry sentencing is a slap in the face of suffering
Bhopal victims”. On the same website, Sathyu Sarangi, of the Bhopal Group for Information
and Action, commented that “by handling those guilty of the world's worst industrial
disaster so leniently, our courts and Government are telling dangerous industries
and corporate CEOs that they stand to lose nothing even if they put entire populations
and the environment at risk”.
In this article, presented in five Parts over the next few months, we draw on a considerable
literature (see our Bhopal bibliography) to consider the claims of Sarangi, Bee and
others in the context of the long struggle for justice by the victims and residents
of Bhopal – a struggle that continues, but within which the recent convictions represent
a landmark. |