The Bhopal gas tragedy Verdict

Folks, just couple of days back, a local Court in Bhopal (MP) announced the verdict on the World’s worst industrial disaster – ‘the Bhopal Gas Leak Case’. The Verdict – it says has convicted 8 people for a mere two years imprisonment with a meager fine of INR 1 lakhs. There is a lot of hue & cry on the verdict in terms of very meager punishment accorded to some of the people manning the then UCIL.

People have compared this case with the recent oil spill that happened in the Gulf of Mexico, US, where the US President Barack Obama has announced that highest punishment be meted out to those responsible for the oil spill, that is the BP. The criticism or rather a comparison had been drawn between the two tragic incidents, as in the latter the US government has announced huge amount of compensation while in the former, way back in 1996 after the SC’s verdict a settlement amount was agreed to between the Government and the then UCC, which was to the tune of $4.7 million. This in fact prime facie seems to be a travesty of justice, especially considering that in the Bhopal case the then US government did nothing for extraditing the prime accused Anderson (chief of UCC). The defence was that US government’s hands were tied up by the existing laws. This to a certain extent was true that US laws were such that Anderson’s extradition could not have been effected.

But it’s really high time that we in India should consider enacting such laws, wherein a foreign government’s co-operation can be easily sought on such kind of disasters that are a result of the negligence of few of the man manning such foreign corporations. A good case in point here the ‘Nuclear Civil Liability Bill’, over which a heated debate has already taken place as to the capping of liability of a foreign government (the US in the Nuke deal). The road ahead in this direction is still murky & bad, we need to draw a make a clear policy decisions on this issue.