Congress, opposition spar over Anderson’s 1984 passage (Roundup)

NEW DELHI - The opposition and the Congress were locked in a war of words Wednesday after a former US diplomat said that then Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson was promised a safe passage home even before he flew to India after the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster.

A day after Gordon Streeb, who was then deputy chief of mission at the American embassy here, told IANS that Anderson came to India only after getting an assurance of “safe passage” from New Delhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) tore into the Congress-led government.

BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad told IANS: “It is too well known from the beginning that there has been foul play. It (Bhopal tragedy) is a non-bailable offence, yet was not treated that way. The (Madhya Pradesh) chief minister, the prime minister, all are accountable. There was high level government involvement to let him out of the country.”

Congress leader Arjun Singh presided over Madhya Pradesh and Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister when tonnes of lethal gas leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal on the night of Dec 2-3 in 1984, killing nearly 3,000 people instantly and many thousands over the years.

The CPI-M was equally harsh.

“The statement by the (American) diplomat, I don’t think has any incorrect idea. I believe it is the truth,” CPI-M politburo member M.K. Pandhe told IANS.

“The problem is he would not have come to India had he not been promised a safe passage, particularly when it is a criminal case of such serious nature. How could he have gone (back) without the government’s support?”

The Congress, whose leaders have spoken in different voices over the controversial exit of Anderson from India, reacted angrily to the claim by Streeb, who said he interacted with Indian officials in the absence of the then US ambassador.

“This is utterly ridiculous. We reject it with contempt it deserves,” party spokesman Manish Tewari told IANS.

Tewari also told reporters: “There was never ever any intention of the central government to allow any culprit to go scot-free. In any case there is a Group of Ministers (GoM). It is looking into the entire issue.”

He said there was a feeling, rightly so, that justice had not been done to the gas leak victims and survivors by the June 7 court verdict.

More than 25 years after the gas leak, which some say has so far claimed some 25,000 lives, a Bhopal court convicted Union Carbide India Ltd and seven of its Indian officials of criminal negligence in the world’s worst industrial disaster.

The seven officials were sentenced to two years in jail but were quickly released on bail, triggering an outcry across India.

Families who lost their near and dear ones to the gas leak and those who have struggled over the years to stay alive accused the judiciary and the government of callousness.

On the defensive, Congress spokesman Tewari said the BJP itself had indulged in flip-flop on the issue.

Anderson, who was briefly arrested in Bhopal in December 1984 and then quickly bailed out, was later declared a proclaimed offender by an Indian court. He is now retired and lives in the US.