BANGALORE, India — Nearly 26 years after toxic gas killed thousands of residents in Bhopal, India, a court on Monday found seven former executives of U.S. chemical giant Union Carbide’s Indian subsidiary guilty of negligence and sentenced them to two years in jail.
The case represented the first criminal convictions in one of the world’s worst industrial disasters. Victims and activists were quick to declare the sentences as wholly inadequate.
“Victims here believe that rather than a deterrent, this judgment is actually an encouragement for companies to work in a dangerous fashion,” said Satinath Sarangi, a metallurgist and founder of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action. “They know that they will get away with mass murder.”
In the early hours of Dec. 3, 1984, a pesticide factory owned by Union Carbide in the central Indian city of Bhopal released approximately 40 metric tons of deadly methyl isocyanate gas.
The poison spread on the wind, exposing some half a million people, many of whom woke up coughing, blinded and vomiting. The Indian government said the disaster killed 3,500 people, while activists put the number as high as 25,000.
Thousands more have lived with cancer, blindness, respiratory problems, mental retardation and immune, neurological and reproductive disorders.
Particularly galling for many was the lack of mention in the Indian court’s verdict of then-Union Carbide Chief Executive Warren Anderson, now 89, an American who jumped bail and fled India after the disaster.
India maintains a warrant for his arrest. The U.S. has been unable or unwilling to extradite him even though Greenpeace activists located him in a Long Island, N.Y., neighborhood in 2002.
“Why was Anderson’s name not included when he was the main culprit?” said Maria Fernandez, an activist in Bhopal. “When you consider how long the families have suffered, under trauma, and he goes free, it’s not at all fair.”
The seven people who were convicted, all Indian nationals, were released on $530 bail and are expected to appeal, leaving some question that they will serve any prison time. Each defendant was also ordered to pay a fine of $2,100. An eighth person named in the conviction has since died.
Union Carbide India was fined $10,600. But it’s not clear the fine will ever be paid: Michigan-based Dow Chemical Co. acquired Union Carbide, the parent company, in 2001 and has denied any inherited responsibility for the incident or its aftermath.
Union Carbide agreed in 1989 to a $470 million out-of-court settlement with the Indian government that absolved it of further liability. Many victims and survivors got about $500. Tens of thousands of people, unable to navigate the complex registration process, received nothing, critics said.
