Twenty-six years and countless court hearings after a gas leak from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal in central India killed at least 15,000 and poisoned the area's soil and water, eight people were found guilty of criminal negligence by a local court here on Monday. One of the eight died prior to the verdict.
The verdict may feel like too little, too late for rights groups who have been campaigning for more than two decades to get justice for the victims of the 1984 tragedy. Activists have said the charges in what is widely held to be the world's worst industrial disaster have been diluted to what might be expected in "something like a traffic accident."
"After waiting so many years for justice ... it's a verdict to make us weep," says Syed M Irfan, convener of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha, a campaign group for victims of the gas leak in Bhopal. He criticized the Indian government's Criminal Bureau of Investigation for their conduct of the case.
"More than 15,000 people are killed and the punishment is just two years in prison. How could that be?" he says. The verdict sends a message to international companies that they could set up shop in India and get away with anything, he adds.
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I'm glad I won't live long enough to see these frakers get off for the Gulf Oil Spill.
