But the seven former employees of Union Carbide’s Indian subsidiary face a maximum sentence of just two years in prison, outraging activists who said the penalty was the same as that for causing a traffic accident.
Those convicted included Keshub Mahindra, the 86-year-old multi-millionaire chairman of tractor maker Mahindra & Mahindra who was chairman of Union Carbide India Ltd at the time of the accident.
The seven men — all Indian — could be the first people to face jail in a 26-year legal battle that has highlighted the inefficiency of India’s judicial system, and stirred a global debate about corporate liability for industrial accidents.
However, their maximum sentence is limited because the Supreme Court reduced the charges in 1996 from culpable homicide to criminal negligence.
Activists and relatives of the victims, many of whom gathered outside the court today, denounced the verdict as “too little, too late” and warned that it could lead to further industrial accidents.
“This verdict sets a very bad precedent,” said Satyanath Sarangi, president of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action.
“In fact, this verdict will encourage hazardous corporations and their officials to go ahead and kill more people and maim them because they can do it so easily … because a disaster like Bhopal can be converted into something like a traffic accident.”
The court also convicted Union Carbide India — but that company has ceased to exist.
The seven former employees, most of whom are already in their 70s, are also certain to appeal against the verdict – a process that can take several years in India – thus prolonging a legal battle that has already lasted more than a quarter of a century.
The Indian Government says that around 3,500 people died soon after a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal accidentally released 40 tons of deadly methyl isocyanate gas into the air on December 3, 1984.
It estimated that the lingering effects raised the death toll to about 15,000 over the next few years, but activists say the leak killed about double that number and may have affected the health of more than 500,000 overall.
They accuse the company and the Government of failing to clean up the site – which is still considered highly toxic — and pay sufficient compensation to the victims.
Union Carbide was bought in 2001 by Dow Chemical Co, which says the legal case was resolved in 1989 when Union Carbide agreed to pay the Indian Government $470 million (£325.5m) in compensation.
Dow also says that all responsibility for the factory now rests with the government of the state of Madhya Pradesh, which owns the site.
India’s Central Bureau of Investigation originally accused 12 defendants: eight senior Indian company officials; Warren Anderson, the American head of Union Carbide at the time of the gas leak; the company itself and two subsidiary companies.
One of the Indian officials has since died and today’s verdict applied only to the seven surviving ones. Separate cases have been filed against the company and its overseas officials, who have never appeared in court proceeding in India.
Mr Anderson, now 89, was arrested in India immediately after the accident, but quickly released on bail and allowed to leave the country. He has refused to return ever since.
An Indian court issued a fresh warrant for his arrest last year, and urged the Indian Government to push for his extradition from the United States.
Source http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7145106.ece
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