By IANS,
New Delhi : Calling the charges “utterly ridiculous”, the Congress Wednesday rejected allegations that then Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson was assured safe passage by the Indian government after the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy.
“This is utterly ridiculous. We reject it (the charges) with the contempt it deserves,” party spokesman Manish Tewari told IANS.
His comments came a day after IANS reported that Anderson was promised safe passage by the Indian government even before visiting India following the Bhopal tragedy. The Congress was in power in New Delhi and in Madhya Pradesh at the time of the gas leak.
A former US diplomat who was the deputy chief of mission at the American embassy here then told IANS that Anderson came to India only after getting an assurance of “safe passage” from New Delhi.
The Congress has all along rejected allegations regarding the central government’s involvement in the release of Anderson.
“There was never ever any intention of the central government to allow any culprit to go scot free. In any case, there is a Group of Ministers (GoM). It is looking into the entire issue,” Tewari told reporters here.
Referring to outrage in India over the court verdict this month that gave only two years in prison to seven accused in the gas leak case, Tewari said there was a feeling, and rightly so, that justice had not been done.
“There is a systemic issue, no purpose will be served by finger pointing,” he said, adding the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had indulged in flip-flop on the issue.
He said in 2001, BJP’s attorney general Soli Sorabjee changed his own opinion after getting advice from a US law firm.
More than 25 years after a gas leak from a Union Carbide plant killed an estimated 25,000 people, a court June 7 convicted the company and seven of its Indian officials of criminal negligence in the world’s worst industrial disaster. All seven were released on bail.