Union Carbide, seven officials convicted for Bhopal gas tragedy (Third Lead)

BHOPAL - More than 25 years after a gas leak from a Union Carbide plant killed an estimated 25,000 people here, a court Monday convicted the company and seven of its officials of criminal negligence in the world’s worst industrial disaster and sentenced the seven to two years jail. They were later released on bail.

Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohan P. Tiwari also imposed a fine of Rs.100,000 on the seven, including Keshub Mahindra, who then headed the Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL) from whose pesticide plant tonnes of lethal gas leaked on the night of Dec 2-3, 1984, killing thousands instantly and many more later.

A Rs.500,000 fine has been imposed on UCIL.

The others are UCIL officers Vijay Gokhale, J. Mukund, S.P. Chaudhary, K.V. Shetty, Kishore Kamdar and S.I. Quereshi. Quereshi didn’t appear before the court due to ill health. Another accused, R.B Roy Chaudhary, died during the trial.

While the defence counsel appealed that leniency should be adopted in awarding sentence because all the accused were aged and had no bad intention, the prosecution said that the harshest of punishment be given to the accused since they were responsible for the killing of thousands of people.

The seven were released on submission of personal bond of Rs.25,000.

Warren Anderson, former chairman of Union Carbide Corp, the American parent company, is absconding.

Tonnes of methyl-iso-cyanate (MIC) spewed out of the now shut pesticide plant that was located in a congested part of the city. In the years that followed, people exposed to the gas kept dying.

The death toll is believed to be about 25,000.