INDIA IS to ask the US to extradite the former boss of Union Carbide blamed for the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster in which about 25,000 people died as part of a belated response to the accident.
“India will make vigorous efforts to get Warren Anderson repatriated,” Jaipal Reddy, member of a nine-member federal group of ministers or GoM said yesterday after the empowered panel completed its deliberations following days of back-to-back meetings.
Anderson was arrested in India soon after the December 3rd, 1984 accident in which over 40 tons of poisonous gas leaked out of the pesticide plant in the heart of Bhopal, but then left the country escorted out by senior Indian politicians following treatment as an honoured guest.
Sporadic requests over years for the extradition of Anderson, now in his 90s and living outside New York, were declined by the US authorities and few now expect Washington to co-operate in bringing to justice the man who India believes to be one of the principal perpetrators behind the world’s biggest ever industrial accident.
The Bhopal gas leak not only killed around 25,000 people – between 8,000 and 10,000 people from slums surrounding the Carbide plant within the first three days-but also infected tens of thousands of others.
These victims still suffer from the gases’ noxious effects, and are afflicted with a range of cancers, deformed births and breathing and neurological disorders.
The GoM was instituted following widespread public anger after the June 7th verdict by a Bhopal court convicting seven Indian Union Carbide managers of criminal negligence and sentencing them to two years’ imprisonment, the same punishment as that awarded in road accident cases.
All the seven were immediately granted bail and are appealing their sentence, which in India’s notoriously slow and overburdened judicial system could take several years if not decades.
The GoM’s recommendations, which are being handed over to prime minister Manmohan Singh for execution, also include federal government help with the clean-up of the still toxic Carbide factory site and the doubling of compensation to the gas leak victims, Mr Reddy said.
“Our focus now is bringing relief to the victims of the ghastly tragedy,” home minister P Chidambaram, who headed the GoM, said.
“We have decided on a compensation of Rs 1 million ($22,000 dollars) for each of the dead less the amount already received,” the minister said.
After initially demanding $3.3 billion from Union Carbide – purchased by Dow Chemicals in 1999 – India surprisingly and inexplicably agreed in 1989 to an out of court settlement of $470 million.
Dow Chemicals says all liabilities related to the accident have been cleared. It also abrogates all responsibility for cleaning up the infected plant site, but a case relating to this aspect is still under process in Indian courts.
In the early 1990s survivors and families of victims were awarded compensation of Rs25,000 ($555) but even this meagre amount never reached the majority of awardees, soaked up by bribes to lawyers, middlemen and touts by largely illiterate victims.
Activists working with gas survivors estimate that some 100,000 people received merely interim compensation of Rs200 rupees ($4.4) per month for a brief period immediately after the disaster, but no final lump sum for a lifetime of medical treatment for many.
The GoM also recommended the establishment of a federal medical research facility in Bhopal to monitor the health conditions of survivors and children born to them, Mr Reddy said.
Activists said the Bhopal tragedy’s re-emergence, coinciding with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill for which $20 billion had already been allocated as initial payment for those affected, has added grievously to the hurt of the Carbide disaster victims, who feel they have received second class treatment from the US.
Indian commentators have declared that the US government appears more concerned about a disaster in its own back yard than one which took place years ago in the developing world.