Bhopal victims 'delighted' over sentence review
Campaign groups working for survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster on Wednesday welcomed a decision by the India’s Supreme Court to look into handing harsher sentences to seven men convicted for the tragedy.
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“We are delighted and the possibility of the Indian accused going to jail for 10 years is much more real now,” Satinath Sarangi from the Bhopal Group for information and Action, an umbrella group for five organizations, told AFP.
In June, a court in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, convicted seven executives from the company that operated the pesticide plant at the centre of the disaster, handing them modest, two-year jail terms. The decision followed a 1996 Supreme Court decision to reduce charges against them to negligence, rather than the more serious crime of culpable homicide which carries a maximum 10-year jail term.
The ruling is now to be reviewed after the central governement requested the case be reopened in the wake of national outrage and anger that managers deserved more serious punishment for ignoring safety warnings.
The Bhopal accident, blamed on Union Carbide, a US chemical group, was the world’s worst industrial accident. Thousands were killed instantly when gas escaped into a nearby residential area and tens of thousands more died from the lingering effects over the following years.
The managers, including Keshub Mahindra, now chairman of top Indian conglomerate Mahindra & Mahindra, have appealed the negligence charge and all maintain their innocence.
India also said it would push the United States to extradite the former chief executive of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson, who is wanted in India for his role in the tragedy.
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