By Pervez Bari, TwoCircles.net,
Bhopal: Over 25 years since the Bhopal gas tragedy, world’s worst industrial disaster, the survivors along with NGOs working for them are sitting with fingers crossed on the eve of the court judgment announcement in the criminal case against the top officials of the Union Carbide from whose pesticide plant here tones of lethal gas leaked on the night of December 2-3, 1984, killing thousands instantly and thousands others over the years while maiming several thousand others.
The criminal case is set between Union of India through Central Bureau of Investigation, (CBI), versus Keshub Mahindra, then a top executive of the Union Carbide of India Limited, (UCIL), and other officials. The survivors are brooding over whether after two and half decades they would get justice and the wrong done to them would be undone by the judiciary by penalizing the culprits to the core.
The survivors believe that the CBI, India’s premier investigating agency, has put up a weak case against the accused. Satinath Sarangi of Bhopal Group of Information and Action says the investigating agency also allegedly failed to produce evidence against Keshub Mahindra and other accused on charges including undermining operational safety.
According to Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationary Karmchari Sangh president Rashida Bee, who has lost six family members in the disaster, in last two decades, the CBI had failed to present the prime accused, including Warren Anderson, the then Chairman of Union Carbide Corporation, USA, before the court. “Justice cannot be done till these accused are tried,” she emphasized.
While Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Pursh Sangharsh Morcha president Mohammad Irfan says the CBI did not challenge the Supreme Court’s order which amended the charges to light sections like 304 (A) (death by negligence) of the Indian Penal Code, (IPC), from tough sections such as 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) against the accused in 1996.
Abdul Jabbar, convener of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sanghathan, (BGPMUS), who has been working with the Bhopal victims since the tragedy struck, is very skeptical about the judgment which will be pronounced on Monday. He alleged that the CBI seems to have been acting on an unsigned directive of the Central government.
Abdul Jabbar’s organization had filed an application to the CJM court to amend the charges against the accused and charge them under Section 304 Part II of the IPC based on new oral and documentary evidence (e.g. February 2010 deposition of defense witness T.R. Raghuraman who stated that Warren Woomer, the then works manager of UCIL, had ordered the shutting down of refrigeration systems on January 7, 1982).
The application was, however, rejected by the CJM on April 26, 2010 on the ground that it was not supported by the Public Prosecutor of the CBI and that no court had the power to go beyond the apex court and change the charges to 304 part II.
It may be recalled that on October 3, 1991 in response to review and writ petitions filed by BGPMUS, Bhopal Gas Peedith Sangharsh Sahayog Samiti (BGPSSS), a broad coalition consisting of nearly 30 all-India and Delhi-based organizations, and others, the Supreme Court of India, while upholding the settlement amount, revoked the criminal immunity granted to UCC and all other accused in the Bhopal gas leak disaster case. And as such on November 11, 1991 criminal cases against all the accused were revived in the CJM’s Court at Bhopal and summons were issued to them to be present in the Court on December 7, 1991. ([email protected])