Ghosts of Bhopal

Ghosts of Bhopal Three years to the day after the grim disaster of Bhopal, the Central Bureau of Investigation has at last decided that the officials of the Union Carbide Corporation can be charged with the culpable homicide of the thousands of people living around the Union Carbide plant. It has charge-sheeted nine officials of UCC and UCIL on the grounds that they were well aware that lapses in the design and the running of the plant of the MIC plant would cause death and injury to humans and animals but had not taken any precautionary measure. This is indeed another example of the kind of irony that has been at play in Bhopal ever since that night of December 2, 1984. The design and operational defects that the CBI has now identified as dangerously faulty had been apparent to several independent experts as early as a few months after the disaster. True, the CBI needed to collect and marshall enough evidence to support the allegation. But surely, an investigation of this nature, where the health and lives of thousands of people were at stake, could have been expedited?