Bhopal gas disaster, a tragedy no compensation could settle

When a horrific accident claims thousands of lives and maims several thousand more, any talk of compensation seems hollow. But often, compensation is how individuals and governments seek closure. Victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984 have finally got closure of a sort when the Supreme Court dismissed a plea to increase the compensation paid to the victims. The plea was filed in 2010 by the Union government and just the fact that there wasn’t a verdict for 12 years denied closure to the Bhopal victims.On March 14, a Constitution bench led by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul unanimously dismissed the Union government’s curative petition to increase the compensation awarded to the victims. The Supreme Court grants relief on a curative petition only in the case of a gross miscarriage of justice arising from a past court order. In this case, the Supreme Court held that the Union government’s petition lacked legal soundness to claim more compensation from the owners of the company responsible for the tragedy.What happened in Bhopal?Historians may remember 1984 for many reasons including the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the carnage that followed. But even that pales before one of the worst industrial disasters the world has seen, which led to Bhopal becoming a burial ground for its citizens.The Union Carbide factory in Bhopal produced some 1,400 tonnes of pesticide annually. On the intervening night of December 2 and 3, methyl isocyanate leaked from Plant C of the factory and entered a water tank. The chemical reacted with the water to create huge quantities of methyl isocyanate gas. The pressure of the gas was so great that it caused the concrete casing of the tank to collapse. medium98726946 Methyl isocyanate is extremely toxic and a concentration of 21 ppm (parts per million) in air can kill a human within a few minutes of inhaling the gas. In Bhopal, the level was multiple times higher. Different estimates say somewhere between 27 tonnes and 42 tonnes of methyl isocyanate had escaped the chambers of the Union Carbide factory that night. Approximately 5 lakh people were exposed to the leakage of methyl isocyanate gas in a city of 8.5 lakh back then.A spectre of devastationWithin a few hours of the leak, more than half of Bhopal’s population was coughing, itching eyes and skin, gasping for breath. People flocked to the two government hospitals in the city complaining of dizziness, breathlessness, skin irritation and rashes, with some reporting sudden blindness. The gas caused internal haemorrhage, pneumonia and death. Bhopal doctors had never faced a situation like this. The two hospitals reportedly treated some 50,000 patients in the first two days of the gas leak. They had no experience in dealing with an industrial disaster. That the symptoms among the patients were those of methyl isocyanate exposure was not immediately known to them.The Bhopal gas tragedy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHJs3TwgsUQThe death tollThe government initially estimated 2,259 deaths in the gas leak. Later, the Madhya Pradesh government updated the death toll to 3,787. Human rights activists said up to 10,000 died. In 2006, the government’s affidavit put the death toll at an approximate 3,900 in the Union Carbide industry disaster that also caused 5,58,125 injuries.In 2010, when the curative petition was filed in the Supreme Court, the Union government said the actual death toll stood at 5,295 and made it the principal ground for claiming an increased compensation.Later, official estimates put the death toll at over 15,000 due to various diseases including cancer in the years after 1984. The government said the leakage was contained in eight hours but even 38 years after the disaster, the trauma is still fresh.The case fileFive Union Carbide employees were arrested on December 3, 1984. On December 6, the case was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The Madhya Pradesh government, then headed by Arjun Singh, announced an inquiry commission under a sitting judge of the Madhya Pradesh high court.On December 7, the CM’s special plane flew Union Carbide’s American chairman and CEO Warren Anderson from Bhopal to New Delhi within hours of him being arrested and released on bail. He subsequently flew out of India. medium98728005 In the US, over 140 claims were filed against Union Carbide on behalf of the victims, seeking compensation for lapses by the company that caused the gas leak. India also sought the repatriation of Anderson. The US courts rejected all the claims as well as India’s request. Back home, the Union government passed the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster (Processing of Claims) Act in March 1985. This made the Union government the principal litigant for the Bhopal gas leak victims.The compensation trailA district judge in a Bhopal court in December 1987 ordered an interim compensation of Rs 350 crore. Union Carbide challenged the order before the MP high court in Jabalpur. The high court reduced the interim compensation to Rs 250 crore in its April 1988 order. This too was challenged, and the matter came before the Supreme Court.While the compensation case was pending in the apex court, Union Carbide and the Union government reached a settlement in February 1989. The arrangement provided that Union Carbide would pay $470mn (about Rs 725 crore at the existing exchange rates). The terms of the settlement included that if the amount was not sufficient to satisfy all claims, the Union government would pay the additional compensation. medium98728229Over the next two years, the government changed from Rajiv Gandhi to PV Narasimha Rao via VP Singh — and the matter came back to the Supreme Court in the form of a review petition. The Supreme Court refused to reopen the settlement, dismissing the government’s argument that the lack of a “reopener” clause in the settlement made it invalid. The curative petition and closureMany governments later, another Congress-led government, this time under Manmohan Singh, moved the Supreme Court with a curative petition in 2010, following an uproar over former Union Carbide executives receiving just two-year jail terms and minor fines.The case came up for hearing before the Justice Kaul-headed Constitution bench on September 20, 2022. On October 11, the Union government, now under Narendra Modi, said it wanted to keep pursuing the case. The court heard the matter in January, reserving its order on the government’s plea for a top-up of Rs 675.96 crore — taking the total compensation claim to $1.2bn — as compensation from the pesticide company. Delivering its verdict on March 14, the Constitution bench said that by the Union government’s own admission, compensation had already been paid, and that there were no more pending claims for compensation.The court said, “The Welfare Commissioner [responsible for compensation disbursement] has specified in an order of January 31, 2009, that, including the pro rata compensation, nearly six times the amount of compensation has been disbursed to victims in comparison with Motor Vehicles accident claims.” It added: “A sum of Rs 50 crore lying with the Reserve Bank of India shall be utilised by the Union of India to set aside pending claims, of any, in accordance with the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster [Processing of Claims] Act of 1985 and the scheme framed thereunder.”In their unanimous ruling, the judges said: “The question of compensation can't be raked up three decades after the settlement.”As far as the compensation battle goes, the Supreme Court verdict gives closure. But for the gas victims, 2,000 of whom undergo medical treatment at the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre every day and 4,000 across six hospitals and 19 clinics run by the gas relief department of the Madhya Pradesh, closure may be a long way off.