The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : Judges and judgments: a correctional inquest

The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : Judges and judgments: a correctional inquest

V. R. Krishna Iyer writes: The Union Carbide facility to produce a lethal gas was installed in India without due safety tests or experimental checks. It was a U.S. corporation and a multinational that was involved, and it could walk through to India as if the country was a mere dollar colony. The catastrophic leakage was the biggest industrial disaster in history. A Bhopal tragedy of Hiroshima magnitude — I call it a ‘Bhoposhima' calamity caused by ‘gasassination.' According to some estimates, around 20,000 people died in the tragedy.

In the first place, the government was grossly negligent in permitting the installation of the unit. A mega-criminal case came up, involving charges under Section 304 of the Indian Penal Code. But a pachydermic court, at the level of the Supreme Court, without care or conscience reduced the gravity of the offences to those involving Section 304A of the IPC. The accused corporate, UCIL, and Warren Anderson, its Chairman, were not prosecuted. When the Chairman came on a visit soon after the tragedy, he was promptly given bail and he went home.

O, the pity of it. How frivolous was the prosecution that ended in lesser officials of the company being sentenced to two years' rigorous imprisonment. A Himalayan offence ended in a molehill sentence. The state — which is also a suspect in the bargain — settled the case under its unknown unlimited power of patria potestas — no more future cases, no more cases from the same catastrophe. The shocking settlement made a mockery of the Indian Penal Code. No real compensation has been paid yet. The law is not merely an ass, but verily a barbarian in this instance. Social justice and economic justice in the Constitution would seem to have become frivolous phrases in this context.