Don’t have papers on Carbide chief’s jail release, admits govt

Twenty-nine years after the gas leak from Union Carbide’s factory in Bhopal killed hundreds, the Centre informed a commission that was set up to inquire into the tragedy that it does not have documents related to arrest and subsequent release of former chairman and chief executive officer of the company.

Updated on: Dec 4, 2013, 01:49:39 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Twenty-nine years after the gas leak from Union Carbide’s factory in Bhopal killed hundreds, the Centre informed a commission that was set up to inquire into the tragedy that it does not have documents related to arrest and subsequent release of former chairman and chief executive officer of the company.

Warren Anderson, the company’s CEO, had reached Bhopal four days after the leak of toxic gas via Mumbai from United States. He was arrested for a few hours in Bhopal, then released on bail and subsequently left India, never to return to again despite a warrant from a court of law.

In 2010, the Madhya Pradesh government set up Bhopal Gas Tragedy Commission under justice S L Kochar after a local court convicted the then Union Carbide India chairman Keshub Mahindra and six others for causing death by negligence. The political clamour after the verdict had pushed the state government to set up the inquiry committee.

Last week, the Union cabinet secretary informed the commission that the Centre does not have any documents related to Anderson, which could end the political blame game over his release.

The local population still suffers from ground water contamination due to abandoned toxic waste in the Union Carbide factory. The governments --- Centre and the state --- has not been able to find a suitable place to burn the waste and therefore, no effort for ground remediation can take place.

In these years, the landscape around the factory has also changed. Buildings now touch the boundary wall of the highly guarded factory. One of the ponds used to dispose toxic waste on once barren land has been encroached upon. Open areas inside the factory now serve as a cricket pitch for children.

“The government sleeps as the people still continue to suffer,” Satinath Sirangi, who has fighting for the victims for the last 20 years, told HT a few months ago.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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