Re: Of Justice and Injustice: Sid Harth
Sid Harth
And if he wasn’t well-connected?
Vir Sanghvi, Hindustan Times
November 14, 2009
First Published: 22:55 IST(14/11/2009)
Last Updated: 23:20 IST(14/11/2009)
Don’t India’s politicians get it? The significance of the Jessica Lall
case goes much beyond the fact that a young girl was murdered and that
her killer was finally convicted.
The true significance of the case is that it symbolises the growing
divide between the educated middle class and India’s bloated, corrupt
political class.
Try looking at it from that perspective and you understand immediately
why the case still has the power to anger, infuriate and move all
educated Indians in a way that few other issues can.
A no-good son of a politician walks into a bar carrying a gun. The
girl behind the counter is educated, well brought up, models and
anchors TV shows for a living. She is bartending for a lark and so
refuses to treat the politician’s son with the deference he is
accustomed to. Angered by the girl’s ‘insolence’, the boy pulls out
his gun and shoots her dead.
From that point on, the political class closes ranks. Favours are
called in, phone calls are made, and instructions are issued. The
police contaminate the crime scene and damage the evidence. The
forensics guys are nobbled. Bullets are switched and lies are told.
When the case comes to court, the boy is acquitted.
The acquittal angers the middle class. One of their own has been
killed in full public view. They are not going to tolerate this
injustice. To the astonishment of the political class, they retaliate
using the tools of the new information age: TV debates, SMS campaigns,
internet petitions.
The politicians think that they can withstand the storm. They get one
of their own to defend the boy in the appeal and outlandish theories
are floated in court. But nothing works. The public outrage is too
strong. The murderer is sentenced to life imprisonment.
Given that the system is so obviously tilted in favour of the
political class, the case represents a rare victory for the educated
middle class. For once, justice has been done. A politician has failed
to keep his worthless son out of prison. A decent girl’s pointless
death has finally been avenged.
My guess is that even now, after the saga has entered modern Indian
folklore, our politicians still don’t understand why we regard the
case as a watershed in the battle between ordinary, educated Indians
and the venal politicians who manipulate the system.
How else do you explain the Delhi government’s behaviour over Manu
Sharma’s parole? By any standards, what the Congress regime in Delhi
has allowed is an utter and complete scandal. What’s worse is that
shameful lies are now being told to cover up for the government’s
venality.
The conventions governing parole say that if a convict has to attend
some significant event (his daughter’s wedding, his mother’s funeral,
etc.) then he must make an application asking for time off. An
investigation must be conducted into the reasons offered and only if
it is found that these reasons are legitimate can the convict be
allowed out of jail for a brief period.
Contrary to what the Delhi government is now suggesting, parole is
rarely granted. In Tihar jail, for example, less than 10 per cent of
parole requests have been granted over the last year. And the vast
majority is still pending, awaiting investigation.
In the case of Manu Sharma, parole was granted for a reason that is
already so unusual as to raise eyebrows — Manu wanted to check how his
business was doing. Two other reasons were tagged on. His grandmother
had just died and his mother was unwell.
The Delhi Police, which was asked to investigate the reasons, reported
entirely accurately that a) Manu’s business was doing okay, b) his
grandmother had died a few months ago so the rites were over and c)
that his mother was fine.
Ignoring these recommendations, the Delhi government went ahead and
granted Manu his parole for a
full month. It says now, by way of justification, that it relied on
the Chandigarh Police, who reported that there was no threat to law
and order in Chandigarh if Manu came there. The investigation of its
own police force was disregarded.
It gets worse. Not only did Manu get a month of parole on these bogus
grounds but the Delhi government then granted him yet another month of
parole even though by now it was staggeringly obvious that all of the
made-up reasons for requesting parole were humbug: Manu’s poor sick
mother was actually addressing press conferences and not lying in some
hospital bed.
And how did Manu regard his good fortune? Why, he did exactly the sort
of thing that got him into trouble in the first place. He went to a
bar in Delhi late one night and got into a brawl. When the police were
called, he fled.
How insensitive do India’s politicians have to be to not realise the
message such behaviour sends out to educated Indians? What we are
being told, in effect, is this: you may have got your guilty verdict,
but how does it matter? Our boy will be sprung from jail whenever we
like. He will still go to clubs and bars. And he will still get into
brawls. So there! You can stuff your SMS campaigns, internet petitions
and TV debates. We are politicians. We look after our own.
Can it be a coincidence that even after the case hit the headlines,
Opposition parties offered only a tepid response? There were no calls
for the chief minister to resign. No demands for fresh elections. No
jail bharo campaigns, etc.
When it comes to its children, the political class is united. It’s
them first. And it is the rest of us afterwards.
But I don’t think that any of us will let it be. We recognise what the
politicians are up to. They think that if they hold firm, the issue
will die down and all of us will find other things to worry about.
After all, they managed to get Manu out of jail without anyone
noticing. If the murderous idiot had not got involved in a bar brawl,
we wouldn’t even have realised that far from suffering in jail, he was
living it up at Delhi’s most exclusive clubs.
The politicians are wrong. This time — just like the last time — we
are not going to forget. We want to see justice done. We want
explanations. We want accountability. We want to see somebody
punished.
Because ultimately, justice is more important than politics.
...and I am Sid Harth
Sid Harth
Opening their own closet
New Delhi, November 12, 2009
First Published: 00:55 IST(12/11/2009)
Last Updated: 00:58 IST(12/11/2009)
One of the most powerful bureaucrats in India owns just one car — a 10-
year-old Fiat. Vijay Shankar Pandey, an additional Cabinet secretary
in the country’s political powerhouse of Uttar Pradesh and one of the
most trusted aides of Chief Minister Mayawati, doesn’t have any cash
on himself either but his author wife Smita does — Rs 4,000 in all.
And there is Rs 1.17 lakh in the bank, and tax saving investments
worth Rs 2.5 lakh.But many among India’s 10,000-odd administrative and
police service officers, the backbone of governance, are believed to
own much more than 10-year-old Fiat cars.
To set an example, Pandey and four other officers — Sunil Kumar,
Renuka Kumar and Raju Sharma of the Indian Administrative Service
(IAS) and Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Jasveer Singh — wrote on
November 6 to Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar, head of the civil
services, giving their wealth details, and also made them public on a
blog (www.declareyourassets.blogspot.com). It is a move that comes
alongside some unexpected and unprecedented developments related to
probity among India’s public figures — cleanup efforts by the
judiciary and an investigation into Rs 4,300 crore worth of allegedly
illegal wealth of former Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda. The five
officers who declared their assets are part of a low-profile anti-
corruption organisation called India Rejuvenation Initiative (IRI).
Its members include former Chief Justice of India R.C. Lahoti, former
Punjab Director General of Police Julio Rebeiro, former air force
chief S. Krishnaswamy, former Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) J.M.
Lyngdoh, former Comptroller and Auditor General V.K. Shunglu and anti-
corruption campaigner and journalist Sharat Pradhan.
After the latest initiative, some other IAS officers are said to be
preparing to make their wealth public. Will it lead to something
bigger and have a cascading effect on enforcing transparency among
bureaucrats? Will that place Pandey alongside Karnataka High Court
Judge D.V. Shylendra Kumar, whose against-the-current stand on
declaring judges’ wealth eventually forced the Supreme Court to
declare judges’ wealth on the Internet? “If the judges have given in,
who are these people (IAS) to stand up? They will have to declare
their assets,” Lyngdoh told Hindustan Times. “They will try their best
to pull the strings — but eventually they will come around.”
The landmark decision by Supreme Court judges to declare their assets
came after a similar move by three men. Shylendra Kumar, a Karnataka
High Court judge, questioned Chief Justice of India K.G.
Balakrishnan’s right to oppose the declaration of assets on behalf of
all judges.
Soon after, Punjab and Haryana High Court judge M.K. Kannan uploaded
details of his wealth on the internet. Madras High Court judge K.
Chandru followed soon after.
“Much before the judges’ campaign started, we have been writing to the
Prime Minister saying that public service conduct rules should be
amended and all this should be in the public domain,” Shunglu said.
“It’s a different matter that no action has been taken by the
government,” he said. “Public servants are much more accountable on a
day-to-day basis.”
There are uncanny parallels between the approach that India’s judicial
leadership initially took and the stand that the top bureaucracy is
taking now.
A committee of secretaries of the central government is currently said
to be mulling over whether to make the audacious move to take the
personal assets of the bureaucracy out of the scope of public scrutiny
through the Right to Information. After a recent order of Chief
Information Commissioner (CIC) that would make IAS and IPS officers
annually declare their movable and immovable properties, the thorny
issue was referred to Chandrasekhar.
“I feel that transparency is a must in public administration and all
those who are paid by the public exchequer should not have any
hesitation in revealing their assets,” said Pandey, who sits in an
unassuming office that exudes simplicity but wields great power — on
the out-of-bounds fifth floor of the State Secretariat annexe in
Lucknow.
Singh, the IPS officer, suggested a law that covered everyone working
with public money — including non-government organisations, and that
the government set up an Accountability and Integrity Commission,
empowered to scrutinise those declarations of assets.
“Public servants mean both the politicians and the bureaucrats,” Singh
said. “The assets of all of them — right from a class-four (lower
ranking) employee to the Prime Minister of the country — should be
declared for public scrutiny.” The step has been widely
welcomed. But some believe India’s bureaucracy is far too hard-boiled.
“Honesty is an exception today rather than the norm,” said Magsaysay
award winner Sandeep Pandey. “I don’t see a movement for uprightness
among bureaucrats because of this campaign. Nevertheless, this is a
welcome step.”
Sid Harth
Encounters have our sanction too
Vir Sanghvi
September 12, 2009
First Published: 22:54 IST(12/9/2009)
Last Updated: 03:27 IST(13/9/2009)
There is something annoying and frustrating about the way in which the
Congress and the BJP are playing politics with the encounter that
resulted in the death of 19-year-old Ishrat Jahan and three of her
companions in Gujarat.
Going by everything we now know, here’s what happened:
The Gujarat Police were informed by central agencies that a team of
terrorists was on its way to the state. The police intercepted the
three men and the woman the intelligence agencies had described as
terrorists and interrogated them in custody for a day.
The following day, they shot all of them in cold blood and placed
their bodies in a car. They planted weapons in their lifeless hands
and then informed the media. According to the Gujarat Police, they had
intercepted the car carrying the terrorists. The terrorists had fired
at them. The police party had fired back and all the terrorists had
been killed.
The point is that we will never know whether they were terrorists. The
killings made it impossible for their guilt or innocence to be
established in a court of law.That the encounter was fake cannot be
disputed: the forensic evidence is too strong for that. All that can
be questioned is the claim — made by the magistrate who investigated
the encounter — that the people in the car were not terrorists to
begin with.
The Gujarat government says that even the Centre had agreed that they
were terrorists. And the Congress which cannot deny the central
government’s role in the encounter argues that a) the Centre only
repeated what the Gujarat Police had said and b) that whoever called
these people terrorists will now be punished.
The point is that we will never know whether they were terrorists. The
killings made it impossible for their guilt or innocence to be
established in a court of law. All we have is the intelligence
evidence and perhaps the information that emerged from the
interrogations. None of this is conclusive.
To go on and on about guilt or innocence in these circumstances is
worse than silly: it makes for petty politics. And it ignores the real
issues raised by the encounter.
First of all, the encounter reminds us of what we already know. When
Indian police forces believe that they are dealing with a terrorist,
they simply kill him or her without bothering with due process.
Are we prepared to live with the situation where a policeman is
prosecutor, judge and executioner?
Second, let’s not pretend that what happened in Gujarat occurred
because Narendra Modi is Chief minister. Policemen routinely kill
terror suspects in all Indian states. To politicise the killings may
win votes but it obscures the reality.
Third, the policy of encounters has broad public support. Conduct a
poll and ask people whether policemen should try and build cases
against terrorists, should persuade witnesses to testify and then wait
six years for the judgement or whether they should just bump them off
and a majority of Indians will prefer execution to prosecution.
Fourth, if we give our policemen the power to kill anybody they regard
as a terrorist, then are we not compromising the basis of our society?
We know now that encounter cops run berserk in India, killing innocent
people at will and building up huge fortunes for themselves. In
Bombay, such encounter specialists as Daya Nayak have been described
as millionaires. In Delhi, encounter ‘hero’ Rajbir Singh was revealed
posthumously to have been a crook who extorted money at gun-point.
Fifth, even if we give our policemen a licence to kill, shouldn’t we
at least stop them from telling blatant lies in an effort to win
medals for themselves? The encounter in which Ishrat was killed was
heavily hyped by the media and the cops who staged the incident were
lavishly praised for their ‘bravery’ in killing four dangerous
terrorists in a gun battle.
There are precedents. Some years ago, the Delhi Police brought two men
who were already in custody to Ansal Plaza and shot them in the
parking lot. Later they announced that they had foiled an attempt to
attack Diwali shoppers in one of Delhi’s busiest malls.
Should we allow matters to get to a stage where not only do the police
murder people in cold blood but they also lie to us so that we can
compliment them on their bravery?
Sixth: but policemen do have a legitimate position that must be
treated with sympathy. Look at it from the point of view of the cops.
I accept that many officers tell lies to win medals for themselves.
But there are also honest policemen who genuinely believe that a) the
best way to fight terrorism is to kill the terrorists and b) that they
have society’s sanction to do so.
But the truth is that society is hopelessly hypocritical. We want the
encounters to continue. But when we are confronted with the reality of
the murders committed on our behalf, we turn sanctimonious.
We demand that the policemen are punished. And we suddenly rediscover
human rights and the rule of law.
Why should some policeman who does our dirty work for us be sent to
jail only because we don’t have the guts to confront what we have
tacitly sanctioned when it emerges in the public domain?
And finally, there’s India’s past experience to consider. Do any of us
genuinely believe that we ended the Naxalite revolt in the early 70s
without killing Naxalites in cold blood? Do we really think that we
finished off the Punjab militancy without resorting to encounters?
The reality is that India has always fought political violence,
terrorism and militancy by trusting the police force’s discretion in
finding the guilty and them bumping them off quietly.
It’s a shocking position for a liberal society to take. But for better
or worse, this has been India’s position for several decades now.
As you can see, the issues are too complex for any simplistic pro-
encounter or anti-encounter position to prevail. There are strong
arguments on both sides. There are terrible dangers inherent in an
encounter policy. But there is also the lack of an alternative
approach and the fact that encounters have worked to consider.
Ideally, we should have the guts to look our encounter policy in the
eye and to confront the issues head-on so that everybody — policemen,
terrorists, lawyers and media — knows exactly where we stand.
But, of course, we do no such thing. We lose ourselves in hypocrisy
and doublespeak.
And when the politicians get involved, they only make matters worse by
trivialising the issues so that they can win votes.
(The views expressed by the author are personal.)
bademiyansubhanallah
Justice of the powerful
Santosh Desai Sunday November 15, 2009
Thank god for the media. Without its intervention, Manu Sharma would
have availed of a free pass for two months to visit more night clubs
and get into more brawls. But once he was spotted clubbing while
allegedly tending to an aging mother who of course was busy giving
press conferences, the resulting media-led outrage ensured that he
himself return to the relative safety of his prison cell. And while
the episode raises many questions about how the law bends in
supplication to the powerful, at least once the matter came to light,
the right thing was done. It was a miscarriage of justice, but
fortunately one without lasting or significant impact. One could even
argue that by turning the spotlight on the subject of parole and the
process it involves, some good might come out of this otherwise sordid
affair.
The trouble is, it’s not quite that simple. There are many layers to
the Manu Sharma affair and the all’s-well-that-ends-well view is a tad
premature and simplistic. While enough questions have been raised
about how he managed to get his parole application approved, perhaps
we should also reflect on the process by which justice was eventually
obtained. Had he not got into a brawl, he might not have been spotted
at all. More importantly, had the other party not been the son of the
highest ranking police officer in the city, none of the subsequent
events might have occurred. A phone call from the young man — who
presumably has no official standing — to his father, galvanized the
police force into action. The police commissioner’s son, it would
appear, has the entire police force as his security agency and a phone
call to daddy suffices to have it land up and use its power. In this
case, one of the offenders turned out to be someone legally out on
parole, but how do we know who the next target of this extra-legal use
of the police force will be?
Similarly, when media uses its considerable clout to shed light on
this episode, is it too in some way, throwing a tantrum reserved for
the powerful? Does it take the same interest in other cases across the
country where the powerful have their way? More importantly, by
throwing its considerable clout around the cases it chooses to focus
on, and forcing the system to act in a manner of its choosing, it
breeds a populist form of justice where presumption of suspicion by
media is seen to be tantamount to overriding proof of guilt. We have
seen this at work in many other cases, most notably that of Aarushi
Talwar, where the parents went through unimaginable pain thanks to a
presumptive media trial.
The reaction to the Manu Sharma case is typical of the blurring of the
notion of justice. Once his case came into the spotlight, everyone
connected with it became fair game for the media and the police.
Anyone can be accused and anyone can be detained for questioning. Take
the instance of Sharma’s friend who was questioned for his alleged
links to him. Now, what makes that a crime? Granted, Manu Sharma is a
convicted criminal but surely being friends with him is not a crime.
In any case, he was out on parole, however he may have obtained it, so
how can anyone accompanying him be culpable for anything? One may ask
in one’s individual capacity as to what kind of a person chooses
friends like these, but surely that has nothing to do with the law.
The role of public institutions like the bureaucracy, the judiciary
and the media cannot be to echo what is a popular sentiment merely
because it is popular. What we are seeing here is the appropriation of
the idea of justice by the powerful. If Manu Sharma benefited from an
informal network of justice created by the powerful, his come-uppance
too was the result of the same process. Remember, his parole — however
unconscionable morally — was legal. What makes this episode deeply
disturbing is not the gravity of the legal infraction Manu Sharma
committed in this case, but the failure of the justice system as a
whole. But what is even more worrying is that what we are calling
justice is in turn not much better, being founded on an equally
informal view of the law.
The real question is whether justice is an absolute ideal, that stands
above the pulls and pressures of current opinion and transient power.
When we blur the idea of justice with notions of fairness as one
section of society sees it, we create a system of informal justice
that is nothing but a contest between two powerful forces each
safeguarding its own interests. Justice becomes subject to market
forces, and the one with greater power wins. Here we have the forces
of politics, the bureaucracy and the media each trying to prevail in a
battle of the powerful, and each using means that are extra-legal.
When we enact laws and enforce them, as human beings we are playing
God. The only way we can presume to do so is if we are able to
artificially create a system much larger than us, one that is beyond
the reach of the transient, the expedient, the powerful and the
popular. This is difficult enough to achieve and unless we are
scrupulous in safeguarding the rights of all those protected by the
law, no matter who they are, justice will become another name for
vendetta and the more powerful will win every time. Justice may have
been delivered this time, but the idea of justice continues to be in
peril.
Comments(10)
Rated 4.7/5 (43 Votes)
Agree (10)
Disagree (1)
Sharda Bhargav - The Confiscated Soul says:
November 16, 2009 at 03:01 AM IST
Thanks media.
Media is the eyes and ears of the society, it has to keep watch on the
process of justice also to inform the people what is right and what is
wrong. Remain upright.
Agree (5)
Disagree (0)
PROBONOPUBLICO says:
November 16, 2009 at 04:01 AM IST
THE MAN ON LIFE SENTENCE FOR A MURDER NOW FALSIFIES AND GETS A
PAROLE..HIS FALSIFICATION CAN BE PROVED BEYOND DOUBT.SHOULD HE NOT BE
PUNISHED SPECIALLY FOR THIS..THIS WHAT IS REQUIRED IN THE INTERSTS OF
JUSTICE SEEMINGLY DONE
Agree (3)
Disagree (0)
Rajul N Desai says:
November 16, 2009 at 04:31 AM IST
Once again, a very crisp, timely piece.
Agree (5)
Disagree (0)
Rohit Pathak says:
November 16, 2009 at 10:38 AM IST
Media has done some good work, but I am afraid this is not a case
where it can take credit.I would have appreciated media's power if it
would have been able to prevent the parole. Secondly, the Delhi CM is
cocking a snook at people who asked her about the merits of granting a
parole and media is doing precious little about it. Looks like media
was in a slumber when the processing of Manu's parole application was
going on, and suddenly woke up when he misbehaved in a bar and then it
turned the heat on.
Agree (4)
Disagree (0)
Satbir Singh Bedi says:
November 16, 2009 at 12:26 PM IST
I agree that Justice is only for the powerful and the more powerful a
man is, particularly in terms of money, the more likely he is to get
justice. Poor people cannot afford to pay for the costly fee of a
lawyer and they often lose their case. What to talk of poor people,
even people of middle class like me cannot afford to get justice as
the fees of the lawyers who are really competent, are so high. In my
case, I feel that I have been not fairly treated by the last Pay
Commission in granting me pension but I cannot fight my case in a
Court of Law as the fees of a lawyer would be more than Rs.1 lakh for
fighting the case. So, what happens is that I keep quite. I neither
have the money nor the power to get justice. And I am not so poor. I
belong to the middle class. So, I agree that the more powerful or more
rich a person is, the more he is likely to get justice. Although media
is quite fair in taking up the cause of the middle class people and
even the poor people who are in urban areas, the people in the Adivasi
areas and remote areas get little attention and some stories do come
in the media but these stories come only when some tribals become
Maosists and really threaten the very idea of the State.
Agree (2)
Disagree (0)
S K Majumdar says:
November 16, 2009 at 02:33 PM IST
For long power has dictated our society. Things are changing and fast.
People in rural and forest India are rising. Because of such
miscarrige of justice, today we are having Maoist-the greatest
internal threat. This threat can be faught with justice. Other wise
let us enjoy many more Manu sharma.
Agree (0)
Disagree (0)
Lopamudra S says:
November 16, 2009 at 06:01 PM IST
Bull's eye! Amidst this clamouring, I really was expecting someone to
point this perspective.
Agree (1)
Disagree (0)
Vijay says:
November 16, 2009 at 06:14 PM IST
I absolutely agree with the author, absolute justice is just absolete
and is rather a myth than a reality. The best part however about this
is that it goes on without realisation until the time you are a part
of this trying desperately to convince yourself that you are not
living in a nightmare and it is happening for real. In case we have
seen the Manu Sharma episode we have seen nothing that is just a
glimpse of the shady justice process. There are a number of such
examples, where the actual accused have used the power at their
disposal be it political, gender, influential, false pretence, Money
etc to restrict the rights of the remaining rightful law abiding
citizens of this nation from exersicing their right for justice in
case a need arises. However that is not to be at least so far. The
process of justice generaly belongs to the powerful, the decietful and
very rarely there are instances of hope showered on the real justice
seeker. The ground reality is so harsh in real terms that a citizen
barely can live their lifetime without falling into the nightmare of
justice for the powerful. It is not a point to give up hope rather it
is an opportunity for the otherwise inluential media to exercise
itself and empower the deprived as they have done in past couple of
years however limited it was to the cases of interest, it did make a
difference. The citizens at the same time however feeble they are must
exersize their own powers at their disposal to fight the menance of
justice just for someone who can twist it his own way. This is a long
debate and editorial like this is a good start to wake up and shake
off the nightmare.
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AMAN says:
November 16, 2009 at 10:45 PM IST
The media has power, and it uses it maliciously. The few times that it
uses that power for a good cause, it gives itself a generous pat on
the back and goes back to reporting on which brainless starlet is
sleeping with which numbskull bozo.
Agree (1)
Disagree (0)
premji jairam babaria says:
November 17, 2009 at 10:40 PM IST
Any system which is designed politically to heal certain ills of the
society will inevitably fail to deliver the justice.Because the very
person who framed this system knows loopholes and take advantage as
they are powerful person politically and moneywise and they have clout
to act as per their whims because they themselves are exploiters.
Sid Harth
V.R. Krishna Iyer
Having more competent judges, not more number of judges, is the
solution to the persisting problem.
Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s
inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
— Reinhold Niebuhr
When justice is denied by any society, including a socialist, secular
and democratic one as in India, expectations darken into depression.
Then that depression turns into dread, dread transforms itself into
despair and despair evolves into explosive terrorism. State violence
as an instrument to suppress terrorism is futile: after a time the
bitterness and revengefulness that is generated will seek to overthrow
those very forces that control state power — call it fasc ism,
naxalism, Maoism or whatever. This dangerous deterioration of
democracy into bedlam terrorism is hastened when access to justice
ceases to be a reality and the only alternative is violence. When the
rule of the robes proves a mirage, the rule of robbery gets support
and sanction.
The way to eliminate this ghastly syndrome is not more state force but
making the system of justice, justices and justicing truly accessible
to the have-nots by means of radical judicial reform that is
decentralised and democratic. If this does not become possible, the
suffering people may leave the courts and take to the streets. This
social strategy and humanism are what we need if noxious, nocent
violence is to surrender to truth, justice, equity and egalite, the
majestic values of the Mahatma. Rowlatt or Chowri Chowra or Naokhali,
or Gandhian courage — which do we need? Here is the critical issue. Is
our justice system jejune, and have the robes been robbed of their
reality?
How shall we transform our judicative process? The Executive has force
at its command and the Legislature is incompetent to make meaningful
laws but has the backing of the masses who voted for its members. The
judiciary has the bench to sit on and the authority of the
Constitution to back it. If its verdict is ignored, it has no means to
enforce its rulings. Sans justice, judges are powerless power.
What is wrong with our courts that they have lost their credibility
and prestige? Corruption has crept in. Forensic morals have been
jettisoned and no longer form their inviolable virtue. More than all
else, delay of dockets and Himalayan arrears frustrate the hope of
justice from the forensic process. While the system is accessible and
open to the rich and those from the creamy layer, the under-privileged
have no money and are priced out of the institution. The Bar, an
indispensable factor in the adversarial system, is too expensive for
the lowly and the forlorn. The fees and the formalities make the law
too dear for the have-nots. The hierarchy adds to the cost, the delay
and the uncertainty of the final verdict.
Appeals upon appeals make justice through litigation inordinately
dilatory and costly, and the law becomes the last means for the
aggrieved to get relief. One appeal is necessary, two is too much, but
we have four or five decks to spiral up. The litigant has only one
life but litigation has several lives to see its end. Judgments
typically take years to pronounce and some judges do not pronounce any
judgment at all. They would seem to be unaccountable since there is no
Performance Commission in operation.
Another great deficiency is that a collegium that is untrained in the
task, selects judges in secret and bizarre fashion. There could be
room for nepotism, communalism and favouritism in the absence of
guidelines. The selection process excludes the Executive. Nowhere in
the world do we have judges alone selecting other judges. The
collegium is a disaster: the P.D. Dinakaran episode is an example. A
new code by a constitutional chapter has become an imperative.
Appointment is a desideratum.
What we now have as weaknesses of the system is Parkinson’s Law and
Peter Principle. The first creates vacancies after mediocre judges
cause arrears to mount. The second elevates officers to the highest
level of their incompetence. Even if you have 10 times the present
number of judges, so long as there is no accountability, the arrears
will multiply, the judicial budget will escalate and the disgrace of
the judiciary will grow. A revolution is necessary and a sense of
scientific spirit and reason is needed if the judicature is not to
become a caricature, or a torture of the right to justice.
If our Founding Fathers are not to be betrayed, we need at once a
judicial-constitutional code including a scissoring of the
hierarchical syndrome. Or be prepared for a revolution. The unknown
collegium, judges expanding their own breed, creating arrears more
than anywhere else in the world, and other pathologies promoting a
self-operated system…
Is India so bereft of statesmanship that it cannot create a swadeshi-
swaraj judicature? A spiritual-natural synthesis carrying out Bharat
jurisprudence and justice system must be the operation of the next
Parliament.
Did not Jawaharlal Nehru assert that the Supreme Court is no third
chamber of the House? Did not Franklin D. Roosevelt tell the American
Supreme Court that if it did not serve the nation’s interest he will
pack the court? Let us not therefore allow the Indian courts to
refrain from the tryst with destiny or go back on the grand Preamble
of the Constitution. We, the People of India, shall not allow the
judges to produce a pathological syndrome of seppuku.
I am critical of the great institution of justice of which I was a
member during the best part of my life. But as Oliver Wendell Homes,
the great American judge, said while criticising his judicial system,
it would be less than fair if I do not constructively and correctively
criticise the system of which I was a part if I see some dark
drawbacks therein. My purpose is only to improve the system, never to
denigrate it.
The Berlin Wall has fallen. Leningrad and Stalingrad is no more on the
map of the Soviet Union. Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, prisoners
under the empire, have become Fathers of the Nations. Why not the
Indian judiciary, patterned after the British, change and become truly
swadeshi and Indian?
Judges have a heavy responsibility in the matter of chronic docket
arrears. Nowhere in the world except in India does litigation last up
to half a century in some instances. The art of fast disposal of cases
would seem to have become alien to the judges, who do not know the
strategy of having a brief hearing and delivering the judgment in a
few days. A leisurely, jocose and even bellicose style, a high-and-
mighty bearing, and slow and endless arguments are hampering the
competent performance of the judges. American judges allow half an
hour and no more. Look at the discipline that this writer showed in
the stay proceedings of the Indira Gandhi case. Originality,
imagination and talent have become scarce commodities. These are
mostly covered up by demands for 10 times more of incompetent judges
and none to expose them for fear of being hauled up for contempt.
The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has been repeatedly urging that
we must have thousands more as members of the judiciary as the
solution to the problem of arrears. But that will only be a remedy
which could aggravate the malady. This is a mediocre recipe that could
prove counter-productive.
This view is supported by two great Indian jurists. M.C. Setalvad
commented in his autobiography My Life (1970) on the statement of Dr.
K.N. Katju, when he was Home Minister, that the “greater the number of
judges in court, the lesser the rate of disposal for each judge.
Though one may regard this as an overstatement, it is undoubtedly true
that a larger judicial personnel frequently makes the courts cumbrous
and slow moving." He added: "What is needed is the appointment of
really able persons who can rapidly and satisfactorily deal with the
accumulation of work."
Likewise, M.C. Chagla observed in Roses in December: “To my mind the
solution is simple. See that the men you appoint are proper ones. Find
judges with an alert and active mind. What is more important, pay the
judges better, give them a better pension, and enforce better
conditions of service. The usual solution put forward is to increase
the number of judges. But if the men selected are not really
competent, Parkinsons’ Law will come into play. The more the judges,
the greater will be the load of work."
It is time we had an effective executive which will call the bluff
when judges invent alibi to explain away their incompetence and
absence of integrity. An investigation into the entire higher
judiciary may well weaken our faith in the integrity and
incorruptibility of their lordships.
http://www.hindu.com/2009/12/02/stories/2009120255001000.htm
Sid Harth
Mahim Pratap Singh
Bhopal: Information obtained from several documents of the U.S. State
Department throws new light on the issue of extradition of Warren
Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide India Limited and prime accused in the
Union Carbide industrial disaster.
While the Right to Information (RTI) documents obtained by activists
from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) bring out bitter truths about
the tragedy, documents obtained from the U.S. State Department under
the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 1966, reveal more inconvenient
truths.
The interests and concerns of U.S. businesses over Mr. Anderson appear
to be a significant factor in the denial of his extradition by the
U.S. government.
For instance, in a letter written to U.S. State Department review
authority Archie M. Bolster (dated July, 24, 2003) by probably a U.S.
industry representative (writer’s name not clear), it is explicitly
stated that “the request [to extradite Mr. Anderson] should be
rejected. No issue has greater potential to destroy U.S. business
leaders’ confidence in India than the handling of the Warren Anderson
case.” It also states that the extradition request was “sheer
hypocrisy” and that its “chilling effect on American investment abroad
cannot be overstated.”
Another letter written by Linda Jacobson, Assistant Legal Adviser of
the U.S. Law Enforcement and Intelligence Department, to Thomas J.
Donohue, president and CEO of U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says: “We are
aware of the importance of this issue to the U.S. business community…
we have learned a great deal about the concerns of the Union Carbide
and the U.S. business community… we have also received and reviewed
written documentation from the private sector related to these
concerns.”
So is Mr. Anderson liable to be extradited at all? “Well, liable yes.
It will be difficult. But there are several instances where Mr.
Anderson has made statements that suggest individual responsibility,”
says Rajan S. Sharma, Lead Counsel for the plaintiffs in the U.S.
against the Union Carbide Corporation. “For instance, he once said in
a press conference in the U.S. that had he known that the plant was
unsafe, he would have shut it down himself,” says Mr. Sharma.
Also, according to Mr. Sharma, on the question of “sabotage by a
disgruntled worker,” Mr. Anderson had said that it was his
responsibility to ensure that the plant functioned in a way that would
not allow any sabotage.
Other documents obtained under the FOIA suggest that the Indian
government might not have pursued Mr. Anderson’s extradition on a
priority basis.
Unclassified documents prepared by the U.S. Consul in Mumbai, dated
July 26, 2004, mention the advice of the Attorney-General of India in
2001 Soli Sorabjee to the government that “efforts should not be made
to extradite Mr. Anderson as there was inadequate evidence to link him
directly to the cause of the gas leak.”
It says, “GOI [government of India] officials may feel that, for
political reasons, they need to be perceived as being concerned about
extraditing Mr. Anderson. Although this does not currently appear to
be a high priority bilateral issue for the GOI.”
On June 7, 2004, when the U.S. government rejected GOI’s request to
extradite Mr. Anderson, experts voiced concerns over the decision and
article 2(1) of the Indo-U.S. extradition treaty as its basis, which
requires the person to be extradited to be charged with an offence for
which he could be punishable in the U.S. for more than a year.
Culpable homicide, for which Mr. Anderson was charged in India, was
equivalent to manslaughter in the U.S. for which a person could be
punished for more than a year (Frontline, October, 2004). So, where
the case is headed? “We are surely making progress. For instance, the
Union Carbide has changed its arguments. Earlier they said that the
case could not be tried in U.S. courts. Now they are ready for trial.
They, however, maintain that UCC is not responsible for the actions of
its Indian subsidiary,” says Mr. Sharma.
Now that much has been communicated by high officials of the two
countries regarding Mr. Anderson’s extradition, interests of the U.S.
business community in the matter and India Inc’s more than vocal
support to Dow Chemical in its efforts to get itself absolved of the
responsibility of cleaning up the Union Carbide factory premises and
the area around it, it needs to be seen if the Indian government
toughens its stand on Anderson’s extradition.
http://www.hindu.com/2009/12/02/stories/2009120256652200.htm
Sid Harth
A security guard is silhouetted against defunct machinery at the Union
Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal. AP
IANS
First Published : 01 Dec 2009 04:16:09 PM IST
Last Updated : 01 Dec 2009 05:12:00 PM IST
BHOPAL: The waste left behind at the Union Carbide factory that was
closed 25 years ago after a fatal gas leak is continuing to poison
people around the plant, says the Centre for Science and Environment
(CSE).
"Latest tests show that groundwater in areas even three km from the
factory contains almost 40 times more pesticides than Indian
standards," CSE Director Sunita Narain said here Tuesday, a day before
the 25th anniversary of the gas leak that killed 3,500 people at once
and maimed thousands more.
The pollution monitoring lab of the Delhi-based think tank, CSE, has
tested water and soil samples from in and around the closed factory
and found high concentrations of pesticides and heavy metals inside
the factory as well as in the groundwater outside.
Union Carbide used to manufacture three different kinds of pesticides
at Bhopal: Carbaryl (trade name Sevin), Aldicarb (trade name Temik)
and a formulation of Carbaryl and gamma-hexachlorocyclohexane (trade
name Sevidol).
While it was the raw material for Sevin, methyl isocyanate, that
leaked on the night of Dec 2-3, 1984, all three pesticides used toxic
heavy metals like mercury and chromium, most of which are persistent
in the soil and groundwater.
"One water and eight soil samples were collected from various places
inside the factory in October this year and 11 more water samples came
from locations outside -- from colonies next to the factory's boundary
to those 3.5 km away and toxins were found in the groundwater checked
from almost 3 km from the factory," CSE Associate Director Chandra
Bhushan said at a press conference.
"All 11 groundwater samples collected from colonies around the factory
were found to be contaminated with chlorinated benzene compounds and
organochlorine pesticides. Carbamates were found in four samples. The
concentration of pesticides was 1.1 to 38.6 times higher than the
Indian standard," he said.
"Also, the profile of chemicals found within the factory and in its
waste disposal site matched the chemicals found in the groundwater
sample in the colonies outside. There is no other source of these
chlorinated benzene compounds and pesticides other," Narain said.
"Our findings suggest that the entire site is highly contaminated. The
waste stored within the factory is a small part of the total
contamination present in the site. The focus of the government to just
dispose off the stored waste and ignore the site contamination problem
is, therefore, not going to solve the environmental problems from the
UCIL factory."
Narain explained: "The factory site in Bhopal is leading to chronic
toxicity -- continuous tiny exposure leading to poisoning of our
bodies. This is different from acute poisoning and so the claim that
the factory is not dangerous because people can touch the waste is
misleading."
The problem, CSE says, is that the chemicals present in the soil of
the factory are leaching into the groundwater and leading to slow
poisoning of residents.
The health impact of this slow poisoning will be enormous, she said,
adding that Chlorinated benzene compounds (such as di- and tri-
chlorobenzene) can affect and damage the liver and blood cells, while
organochlorine pesticides can lead to cancers and bone defects.
Health impacts of Carbaryl and Aldicarb include damage to the brain
and nervous system and chromosomal abnormalities.
CSE researchers have found that people living around the factory
continue to suffer from diseases ranging from chronic ailments to
abnormalities. No one, however, is certain how much of it is related
to the gas release and how much has been exacerbated because of
continuing exposure to toxins.
"The Indian Council for Medical Research was asked to conduct long-
term epidemiological research right after the disaster, but these
studies were summarily discontinued in 1994. The initial reports
suggested long-term and deadly health effects on the survivors,"
Narain recalled.
"The entire site of the factory needs to be carefully checked and
cleaned up. The cost of such an operation will be very high. Who will
pay for this continuing environmental damage?" she asked.
"Dow Chemical Company, which has bought over Union Carbide, says it is
not responsible. It wants the high court to delete it from the list of
respondents. Based on letters accessed by RTI activists, it is also
clear that there is pressure to dilute the liability of Dow Chemicals,
arguing that the company had nothing to do with Union Carbide India
Limited, which operated the plant."
This cannot be acceptable, she said, adding: "The toxins we have found
in the factory are related to the production process of the plant. It
is clear that Union Carbide was dumping its waste -- of chemicals and
pesticides -- in the factory compound over the years it operated the
factory. Dow must be held responsible.
"Its own annual report shows that it has taken on the liability of
Union Carbide in the case of asbestos exposure in the US. Why is it
denying this responsibility in India?"
Sid Harth
People carry potable water collected from inside the premises of Union
Carbide factory in Bhopal. The Bhopal gas tragedy killed about 4,000
people. AP
IANS
First Published : 30 Nov 2009 03:06:30 PM IST
Last Updated : 30 Nov 2009 03:09:10 PM IST
BHOPAL: Bhopal gas disaster victims Monday wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker
Meira Kumar and Vice President Hamid Ansari, the Rajya Sabha chairman,
saying parliament should pay homage to the hundreds of thousands
affected by the tragedy 25 years ago.
"We would like to remind you that on the night of 02/03 December 1984,
over two-thirds of the 900,000 residents of the city of Bhopal were
exposed to highly toxic gases that escaped from the premises of Union
Carbide India Ltd, which was controlled by the Union Carbide Corp, a
US multinational company," they said in the letter.
"We, hereby, humbly urge you to take the initiative in ensuring that
the members of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha would, on this occasion,
pay homage to the victims of the world's worst chemical disaster."
Abdul Jabbar, convenor of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog
Sanghathan (BGPMUS), and N.D. Jayprakash, co-convenor of the Bhopal
Gas Peedit Sangharsh Sahayog Samiti (BGPSSS), sent the letter
separately to Meira Kumar and Ansari.
It also expressed hope that the members of the houses would prevail
upon the government of India to make amends for its past mistakes
related to the tragedy.
The letter, which mentions the tragedy, its aftermath, the inadequate
compensation and improper rehabilitation, also speaks about the
adverse health impact that continues to dog the victims.
The claim courts in Bhopal have determined that 574,367 victims had
suffered injuries in varying degree causing the untimely death of
several thousands.
"The grievousness of the injuries suffered by the victims are such
that even 25 years after the disaster no less than 6,000 victims
continue to visit hospitals every day due to disaster-related
ailments," the letter said.
Progenies of gas victims appear to be suffering from genetic effects
and, reportedly, there is a rise in cancer cases of various kinds, it
adds. The letter further mentions that what is equally worse is that
each gas victim was in fact awarded less than one-fifth of what he or
she was eligible to receive as per the terms of settlement, which
itself was a paltry sum compared to the magnitude and gravity of the
disaster.
"What is equally worse is that the settlement amount of $470 million,
which was determined on the assumption that there were only about
105,000 gas victims, including 3,000 dead, was actually disbursed to
574,367 gas victims, including over 15,000 dead," it says.
The next of kin of each of the dead were awarded a sum of Rs.200,000
on an average and each of the injured was awarded a sum of Rs.50,000
on an average. However, none of the gas victims was paid interest for
the period of delay in the award of compensation despite the fact the
process of adjudication of claims stretched from 1992 to 2006, that is
eight to 22 years after the disaster.
Moreover, the accused officials of Union Carbide are yet to be
punished for their criminal negligence that led to the tragedy.
"In fact, the government of India has made little effort to bring
prime accused Warren Anderson and concerned officials of accused
companies Union Carbide Corporation and Union Carbide Eastern to face
trial in India," it says.
"Instead, the government of India is doing all it can to please Dow
Chemical Co, the present owners of Union Carbide Corp."
chhotemianinshallah
By: Sathyu Sarangi
Karen Haydock
Many of the battles begun 25 years ago, in the aftermath of
catastrophe, continue today.
When I arrived in Bhopal soon after the disaster, I was rather
unprepared. Rushing to the city from the small town four hours away
where I worked in an NGO, I had very little information (the news on
the government-run radio station had drastically downplayed the
tragedy), almost no local contacts and only a hundred-odd rupees in my
pocket. I had along a few changes of clothes, because I didn’t think
I’d be staying in the city for much more than a week, helping out with
emergency relief.
The previous day, in the early hours of 3 December 1984, 40 tonnes of
toxic methyl isocynate (MIC) and other lethal gases were accidentally
released from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal that manufactured the
pesticide Sevin. Later investigation pointed to water having entered
and raising the temperature inside the storage tanks, thus leading to
the deadly gas bursting from tanks that were not designed to manage
under such pressure. The magnitude of the disaster was not fully known
at the time; indeed, some of the impact is still coming to light 25
years later.
The day after the gas leak, the train to Bhopal was nearly empty, and
the few on it seemed to have no knowledge of what had really happened
at their destination. Yet as soon as I walked out of the railway
station, I could see thousands of people in utter pain – their eyes
swollen, tears streaming down their cheeks, huddled together with
family and friends. I saw some attempting to walk with unsteady steps,
before falling down – whether unconscious or dead, I didn’t try to
figure out. The railway station was just 1.5 kilometres from the Union
Carbide plant, all of which was surrounded by densely populated
communities that were badly affected by the leak.
The enormity of the pain all around, and my helplessness to offer any
kind of assistance, was numbing. I just stood at the station exit and
stared. My head and hands finally began to work again when I saw
hundreds of people helping the victims. Young and old, mostly men,
from various social and religious organisations and many more
unaffiliated, were busy caring for the survivors. A bus stop just
outside the railway station had become a medical relief camp, where
survivors could get milk, fruit, water and words of comfort.
Medical supplies were limited to eye drops and antacids to deal with
the burning sensation in the eyes and stomach, and tablets for
breathlessness. Knowing that these were of little help, however, most
of the volunteers in the area were focused on carrying survivors to
passing vehicles, to be taken to the nearby Hamidia Hospital. I joined
them for a while, and then decided to continue into one of the
neighbourhoods near the station. There, I found the situation to be
much worse. Open a door at random, and you were apt to see an entire
family sprawled on the floor – some unconscious, some groaning, only a
few able to talk. I went back to the main street and soon had more
than 50 volunteers join me in carrying people from their homes,
lifting them into passing vehicles. Not one of the drivers of these
cars, trucks or autorickshaws refused to take the victims to the
hospital; there was always room for another survivor.
The evening sky on my first day in Bhopal was lit up by the mass
cremation pyres that I was told had been burning non-stop since the
previous day. I met a man whose hands were covered with blisters. He
lived next to a Muslim graveyard. Not knowing what else to do, he
didn’t stop digging mass graves for three days and three nights,
unmindful of what the work was doing to his unpractised hands. I must
have been in a similar state of mind. It was only several days later
that I began to make some sense amidst the chaos and uncertainty: Is
the water safe to drink? Is the food okay to eat? Many mothers died,
many aborted as they ran, but what of the unborn babies who had no
place to escape to from the poison clouds, were they okay? And I found
things to do amidst the millions that needed to be urgently done.
No faith
In those apocalyptic moments no one knew what was happening. People
simply started dying in the most hideous ways. Some vomited
uncontrollably, went into convulsions and fell dead. Others choked to
death, drowning in their own body fluids. Many died in the stampedes
through narrow gullies where street lamps burned a dim brown through
clouds of gas. The force of the human torrent wrenched children’s
hands from their parents’ grasp. Families were whirled apart. The
poison cloud was so dense and searing that people were reduced to near
blindness. As they gasped for breath its effects grew ever more
suffocating. The gases burned the tissues of their eyes and lungs and
attacked their nervous systems. People lost control of their bodies.
Urine and faeces ran down their legs. Women lost their unborn children
as they ran, their wombs spontaneously opening in bloody abortion.
– From the “Bhopal Medical Appeal”, 1994
Through chance encounters and word-of-mouth I met with local students,
activists and social and political workers, as well as volunteers like
myself who had come to Bhopal from elsewhere. Overnight, an
organisation committed to the people’s struggle for rehabilitation and
justice was formed. Three individuals – an activist scientist, a
lawyer and the chief functionary of a left political party – were
chosen to lead the new group, which almost automatically began to
attract victims into its fold.
Several other newly formed organisations were active in distributing
relief material, carrying out preliminary medical research and running
emergency clinics. Despite this good and crucial work, however,
internecine conflicts were already becoming palpable, as ideological
differences and personality clashes between the leaders prevented a
coordinated response. Our organisation focused on mobilising survivors
to demand their rights to health care and rehabilitation, collecting,
generating and disseminating medical information, and garnering
national and international support.
Soon after, we heard that a German toxicologist had arrived in Bhopal
with 10,000 ampoules of sodium thiosulphate, which when administered
intravenously assisted in the excretion of toxins ingested during the
gas leak and thus provided relief. Yet while the ampoules were quickly
distributed among government officials and the people they knew, the
director of health services, apparently apprehensive of possible side
effects, had passed an edict against administering it to common
survivors. Yet our own research, with much help from scientist
friends, showed that there were no side effects, and that sodium
thiosulphate could indeed be effective in removing poisons circulating
in the bloodstream – thus saving lives of thousands, especially unborn
babies.
But there was no room for scientific debate in the heated environment,
or in the face of vested interests. Union Carbide did not want the
sodium thiosulphate to be administered and the after-effects
monitored, because that would establish that the gases had injured not
just the eyes and lungs (as the corporation wanted people to believe)
but almost all the organs, by getting into the bloodstream. Those of
us who managed to administer sodium thiosulphate through clinics we
set up were arrested. In those first years, medical issues in Bhopal
were deeply political.
Meanwhile, the dumping of dead bodies by the local authorities, in
their effort to downplay the effects of the disaster, quickly became
common knowledge. The combination of factors – inadequate safety
systems, poor maintenance of the plant, as well as faulty design and
practices – all pointed to criminal negligence on the part of Union
Carbide and its management. But the release on bail of Warren
Anderson, then the chairman of Union Carbide, who visited Bhopal four
days after the disaster, followed by his being escorted out of Bhopal
under tight security the same day, was confirmation that the
government was colluding with the corporation.
We were also unsuccessful in stopping Operation Faith, the state
government’s plan, less than two weeks after the disaster, to allow
Union Carbide to manufacture pesticides from the chemicals left behind
in the leaking tank. Our attempts along these lines included
highlighting the testimony of scientists detailing how methyl
isocynate, the raw material used to manufacture the pesticide, could
be neutralised safely with caustic soda. However, we were just a few
people, and government officials had more faith in Union Carbide’s
science. So we helplessly watched thousands and thousands of people
leave their homes, fleeing again from the city before the factory was
restarted. A number of survivor activists we had befriended stayed
behind with us to guard their neighbourhood from thieves, including
policemen, who had begun to steal things from abandoned homes. Sitting
around log fires through the night, armed with wet rags for possible
emergency use, we shared stories and ruminated in clichés about life,
death and the meaning of it all.
Operation Faith was started with much fanfare. As pesticide production
resumed in the factory, a government helicopter sprayed water from the
sky, jute screens were placed above the factory walls and water
tankers sprayed water along major streets. Survivors commented that
the jute screens would not even stop bidi smoke, let alone any leaking
gases, and wondered whether the gases would follow the wet roads.
Another drama was also on display at that time. On the road leading to
the factory, workers from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and
other Hindu fundamentalist organisations marched alongside a truck in
which a havan (the burning of wood, incense and ghee) was being
performed, claiming that it would purify the poisoned air. We
successfully stopped this procession before it could reach anywhere
near the factory.
Ironically, the same government that announced Operation Faith by
stating there was no cause for panic simultaneously mobilised buses
from throughout the state to carry people away. Meanwhile, the
government move that had dispersed the people who were beginning to
organise was not entirely successful. Our first mass mobilisations
began in the relief camps set up in another part of the city for those
driven out of their homes. The camps were places where people from
different neighbourhoods came together and shared their suffering and
anger towards both Union Carbide and the uncaring government of Madhya
Pradesh. Here, people talked about the ‘big picture’, the plunder and
pillage for profit and the government’s collusion with corporations.
They also discussed the many ways that the common people could change
this, ranging from exposure of their crimes to linking up with other
victimised communities to fight legal and extra-legal battles.
Basti education
It was interesting to see how the disaster and its aftermath quickly
became a crash course in politics related to corporations and
governments, confirming and elaborating long-held wisdoms and
convictions. The role of governments and their attitude towards common
citizens, self-serving politicians, factory management that did not
care about workers and other people’s lives, the poor being forced to
fight for their rights – such issues were suddenly being discussed on
every street corner of Bhopal. As such, when supplies to the camps
were suddenly cut off and the camps were wound up within a week of the
disaster, we marched with several hundred survivors demanding that
Governor K M Chandy request urgent help from the central government.
Instead of additional help, however, there came orders to close down
the relief camps because, ostensibly, Operation Faith was over and the
government thought that people should now go back to their own homes.
As the first few weeks went by, there remained little doubt that, left
to its own devices, the Madhya Pradesh government would continue to
neglect survivors, and also that it would take far more than a few
hundred people marching on the Bhopal seat of power to have it
respond. Meanwhile, Union Carbide was in full swing with its public-
relations campaign. Senior corporate officials were busy telling the
world’s media that the leaked gases were similar to a potent tear gas,
and thus unlikely to cause lasting damage. Medical professionals were
flown in to Bhopal by the corporation – not to help with the treatment
of those exposed, but rather to endorse the corporate view in press
conferences. It was not just the magnitude and complexity of the
unfolding disaster that was overwhelming; dealing with Union Carbide’s
deceit and denial was equally challenging.
Then there were the American lawyers who began to descend on Bhopal.
Through local agents, they began getting survivors to sign retainer
forms – forms that many could hardly see through swollen eyes, let
alone read the English-language fine print that promised up to 40
percent of any eventual compensation money to individual lawyers, as
fees. As competition grew among these lawyers, they began doling out
blankets and then cash to entice their new clients, all promising
millions of dollars in eventual compensation.
With so much going on, and so much to be vigilant about, there was
little time to ponder my own future plans. Questions as to whether,
how and how long to stay on in Bhopal never entered my mind. Thanks to
donations from local, national and international supporters, the
volunteers had places to sleep and adequate meals; but we spent most
of our time in the bastis, in the communities of survivors we had by
then befriended. Perhaps this sounds odd, but amidst all the sadness
these evenings were quite enjoyable, with people occasionally singing
songs, playing music and sharing stories full of rare humour.
Kaarbaaid condemnation
Warren Anderson: Wanted in Indian courts
Karen Haydock
During the third week in Bhopal, we began preparations for a march to
Chief Minister Arjun Singh’s house. We decided to have it on the 3
January 1985, a month after the disaster, which we would observe as
Dhikaar Divas (Condemnation Day). This would be an opportunity to
publicly challenge the state government’s criminal neglect of the
survivors, and to demand that it make arrangements for immediate
health care and relief for survivors suffering from eye problems,
respiratory difficulties, immune and neurological disorders, cardiac
problems, lung injury and female reproductive difficulties. As we
moved from house to house, from one neighbourhood to the next, we
found that the local people did not need much convincing – it was only
desperate health problems that would stop most of them from joining
the rally.
The march began with a few hundred people near the now-closed Union
Carbide factory. As we proceeded, more and more groups of people
holding hand-scrawled banners and chanting slogans joined the march.
By the time we had covered half the distance (four km) in about two
hours, the march had swelled to over 10,000 people. Our procession was
far from orderly – people were everywhere and traffic stood still.
There were so many slogans being chanted by so many groups that it
wasn’t possible to hear any one in particular; but what was clear was
that these cries came from deep-seated anger and despair. People kept
joining in waves, such that by the time we walked up the hill to the
chief minister’s palatial, heavily guarded house, there were over
15,000 survivors in attendance – far too many for the police to
handle.
Once we arrived, we sought a meeting with the chief minister, which
was not granted. So, after consulting the many community leaders who
had been active in organising the march, we decided to sit on a dharna
outside the chief minister’s residence until he agreed to meet us.
People determined enough to face any eventuality cheered the decision,
and thousands of voices asserted that we would not move until the
chief minister agreed to our demands.
Thus began one of my most memorable weeks in Bhopal. Among the rocks
and bushes on the hillside outside of the chief minister’s residence,
people found places to sit in small groups. Soon, some began to look
for wood and to light small fires, and teams were sent to bring food.
In the bastis, women breathless and choking more than usual with the
fumes from wood stoves were making chapattis, not just for their own
families but for strangers as well. Families with so little to give
were caring for orphaned children who had joined the dharna. Truck
drivers were helping to transport food, firewood and groups of people
from the shanties – slipping away from their delivery runs,
unbeknownst to the vehicle owners. Children found new friends to play
with, and together they would chant the slogans they had begun to
learn: “Dolaar kee chaal ne, zahar gholaa Bhopaal mein” (Greed for
dollars spews poison over Bhopal) and “Kaarbaaid ke khunee panje tod
do marod do” (Carbide has blood on its hands. Break them! Destroy
them!). A few volunteer doctors were tending to the sick, and there
was always a team ready to carry people to the hospital.
Before nightfall, electricians from among the marchers had rigged up
connections to the streetlights, which would power loudspeakers used
for announcements regarding logistics and updates on the ongoing
negotiations with the chief minister and bureaucrats working closely
with him. Soon, the loudspeakers also became central for people
speaking out. Breathless poets recited poems of dignity and courage;
women who had rarely left their thresholds or showed their faces to
strangers articulated their anger against a foreign company and a
complicit state government.
Indeed, the entire area around the chief minister’s house was
transformed, and I was happy to find the time to absorb this magic. It
became a place of bustling human activity, intense communication and,
most of all, a powerful assertion of the collective spirit of survival
and cooperation. By the third day of our dharna, the state government
began to give way. Arjun Singh initially agreed to a meeting with a
delegation of the leaders, but this proved unacceptable to the mass,
who insisted that he speak to all of them. Finally he relented and
appeared before the survivors, several thousand of whom were invited
into his residence. Of course, he did not agree to all of their
demands, but survivors were more confident than before that the
government could be made to listen to them. After the week-long siege,
we had to fight other battles.
Contamination and community
Thus began my long involvement with the survivors of the Bhopal gas
leak. In early-1986, I left the Zahreeli Gas Kand Sangharsh Morcha
(Poisonous Gas Disaster Struggle Committee) and founded the Bhopal
Group for Information and Action. Given the intensely political nature
of health issues, it was some time before we could set up the
Sambhavna Trust, but this was finally done in 1995 with individual
donations, tasked with providing treatment to survivors and also
conducting medical research.
But today the issues still remain; the tragedy is still being played
out. Besides respiratory problems, organ failure and major disaster-
related injuries, the next and future generations are bearing the
brunt of genetic malformations. On a day-to-day basis, contaminated
water and toxins are being leached into the soil from the abandoned
factory, and thus are a continuing nightmare for survivors. As such,
there is no easing off from campaigning for the clean-up of the
factory, where sacks of dangerous chemicals continue to be stacked.
Yet while the government of Madhya Pradesh and Dow Chemical squabble
over who is responsible, the groundwater continues to be poisoned.
There are larger issues in play here, as well. Along with raising
issues of the gas leak and specific demands against Dow Chemicals and
the Indian government, we have campaigned for corporate
accountability, punishing corporate crime, public access to
information on industrial activity, inherently unsafe technologies and
products, and regulation of corporate activities.
I can’t remember exactly when it was, but some time in that week of
dharna I decided to be part of this community of suffering, sharing
and hope. Not once in the last 25 years have I ever regretted that
decision.
Sathyu Sarangi is a metallurgical engineer who founded the Bhopal
Group for Information and Action (BGIA), and is founder trustee of the
Sambhavna Trust.
In the early hours of 2-3 December 1984, the Union Carbide factory in
Bhopal accidentally spewed forth tonnes of toxic methyl-isocyanate
(MIC) gas. In what has been described as the ‘Hiroshima of the
chemical industry’, thousands died and hundreds of thousands were
injured. The after-effects continue to date, with future generations
bearing the burden of genetic malformations and contaminated
groundwater. The paltry compensation, and denial of accountability by
Dow Chemical (the corporation that now owns UCC), represents one of
the greatest travesties of justice. Below is a brief re-cap of the
accident and its deadly aftermath.
1969: The Union Carbide India, Limited (UCIL) factory is established
in Bhopal; 50.9 percent owned by Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and
the rest by various Indian investors, including public-sector
financial institutions. It produces the pesticide carbaryl (brand-
name: Sevin).
1979: A methyl-isocyanate production plant is added to the site.
2-3 Dec 1984: Twenty-seven tonnes of methyl isocyanate are
accidentally released at midnight. The six safety systems designed to
contain such a leak are all non-operational, thus allowing the gas to
spread throughout the city of Bhopal. The MIC tank alarms have not
worked for the previous four years.
Half a million people are exposed to the gas. Between 8000 and10,000
people die within the first few days, and 20,000 die over the
following 25 years as a result of their exposure. Today, more than
120,000 people still suffer from ailments caused by the accident and
the subsequent pollution at the plant site. The causes of deaths are
choking, circulatory collapse, lung collapse, cerebral oedema, kidney
and liver damage. The stillbirth rate thereafter increases by up to
300 percent, and neonatal mortality rate by 200 percent.
16 Dec 1984: Tanks 611 and 619 at the plant are emptied of the
remaining MIC as part of Operation Faith, leading to a mass exodus
from Bhopal.
1985: The government of India passes the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster
(Processing of Claims) Act, enabling the government to represent all
victims in or outside India.
1989: A settlement is reached under which UCC agrees to pay USD 470
million (the insurance sum, plus interest) in a full and final
settlement of its civil and criminal liabilities – an agreement for
which the survivors had not been consulted. The compensation amounts
to about USD 500 per affected person – barely five years worth of
medical bills. In 1991, the Supreme Court is to uphold the settlement
and dismiss activist petitions.
1991: A local court in Bhopal charges Warren Anderson, Union Carbide’s
CEO at the time of the disaster, with manslaughter. If tried in India
and convicted, he faces a maximum of ten years in prison. However
Anderson, who has been declared a fugitive, has never stood trial
before an Indian court.
1993: The US Supreme Court dismisses an appeal of the decision of the
lower federal courts, thus closing the doors for victims of the Bhopal
disaster from seeking damages in a US court.
1998: The Supreme Court of India directs UCC, which had wanted to sell
its shares in UCIL, to finance a 500-bed hospital for the medical care
of the survivors. Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre is
subsequently inaugurated the same year, obliged to give free care to
survivors for eight years.
1999: Greenpeace reports that soil and water in and around the plant
are contaminated by organochlorines and heavy metals. A February 2002
study subsequently finds mercury, lead and organochlorines in the
breast milk of women living near the plant. The children of gas-
affected women are subject to a frightening array of debilitating
illnesses, including retardation, gruesome birth defects and
reproductive disorders.
1999: A civil case against UCC is filed in US court, seeking a
comprehensive clean-up of the contaminated site and the properties
around the factory, as well as compensation and medical monitoring for
those poisoned by Union Carbide’s chemical waste.
2001: Dow Chemical purchases Union Carbide, thereby acquiring its
assets and liabilities. However, Dow Chemical has steadfastly refused
to clean up the site, provide safe drinking water, compensate the
victims, or disclose the composition of the gas leak – information
that doctors could use to properly treat the victims. Dow sets aside
USD 2.2 billion to pay off former Union Carbide asbestos workers in
Texas, but has consistently maintained that it is not liable for the
Bhopal accident.
2004: The Supreme Court of India orders the Indian government to
release any remaining settlement funds to victims. The fund is
believed to amount to USD 500 million after earning interest “from
money remaining after all claims had been paid”.
2004: On the 20th anniversary of the disaster, a man claiming to be a
Dow representative is interviewed on the BBC. Immediately after he
states that the company has agreed to clean up the site and compensate
those harmed in the incident, Dow’s share price falls 4.2 percent in
23 minutes – a loss of USD 2 billion in market value. (The
‘representative’ is actually a member of the activist prankster group,
The Yes Men.)
Current concerns: About 50,000 Bhopalis cannot work due to their
injuries. About 200,000 children were exposed to the gases, and
medical relief remains a major concern: for people born since the
disaster who suffer from gas- and water-poisoning, for adequate
compensation for past medical bills and loss of livelihood, and for
clean-up of the factory, which continues to poison nearby land and
drinking-water supplies.
-Editors
http://www.himalmag.com/December-1984_nw3933.html
chhotemianinshallah
Agencies
Posted: Dec 02, 2009 at 1853 hrs IST
New Delhi Paying condolences to the victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas
leakage, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh affirmed on Wednesday that his
government's commitment to addressing all issues connected to the
tragedy, including safe drinking water and expeditious clean-up of the
site.
In a statement here on 25th anniversary of the leakage at Union
Carbide pesticide plant, Singh said the government owes it to citizens
to put in place "procedures and precautions" to ensure that such a
tragedy never occurs again.
"Twenty five years ago, the country woke up to a terrible tragedy in
Bhopal... I share the grief of those affected by this horrible
incident," he said about the mishap in which 5000 people were killed
and many others incapacitated permanently.
"The enormity of that tragedy of neglect still gnaws at our collective
conscience," he said.
Noting that the families which suffered and lost their dear ones can
never really be fully compensated, he said, however, the government
has implemented several measures to provide relief to them, including
improvement in their living conditions and socioeconomic and medical
rehabilitation.
"Those affected by the catastrophe deserve our continuing support and
sympathy," Singh said.
"I reaffirm our Government's commitment to resolving issues of safe
drinking water, expeditious clean-up of the site, continuation of
medical research, and any other outstanding issues connected with the
Bhopal Gas Tragedy," he said.
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Bhopal-gas-tragedy-PM-promises-to-address-all-issues/549067/
Sid Harth
The issues raised by a two-judge bench have the potential to undo many
reformative steps taken by the apex court
M J Antony / New Delhi December 02, 2009, 0:27 IST
Judicial activism has faced several assaults from politicians and
bureaucrats ever since the Supreme Court became affirmative. But the
sad part is that it has had to also face onslaughts from within.
When the public interest litigation movement was in its infancy, a
bench of strict constructionists one morning brought up 10 questions
that would have choked its growth in coils of conservative
interpretation of the Constitution (Sudip Mazumdar vs Union of India).
However, some years later, another bench deftly deflected the attack
by “disposing of” the case without answering the loaded questions, and
the movement advanced with renewed vigour. Citizens applauded it.
Recently, another bench drafted a set of questions that threatened to
weaken the Supreme Court, which is said to be the mightiest under any
democratic system. The thrust of this new lot was to restrict the
powers of the court and leave the executive and the legislature alone
on the ground of “separation of powers” (University of Kerala vs
Council of Principals). This doctrine itself is undefined and has been
a subject of constant debate among jurists for about seven centuries
now. The Constitution of India does not recognise strict separation of
powers.
In this case, a bench had earlier set up a committee of distinguished
educationists and others to study the conduct of student union
elections in view of criminalisation of student politics. The panel
made some recommendations which the court asked the authorities to
implement. When the matter came up before the bench mentioned earlier,
the whole course of the case took a different turn. This bench raised
complex constitutional questions. In its opinion, the court could
neither legislate or take over executive functions, nor act as an
“interim Parliament”.
The two-judge bench formulated several issues regarding separation of
powers and the power of the court to direct executive authorities to
implement its recommendations. It asked the Chief Justice to set up a
Constitution Bench to address those issues. This could result in a
giant leap backwards on several counts.
The question whether a two-judge bench can refer questions directly to
a Constitution Bench, thus violating the court’s own practice and
discipline, is only procedural. But the most worrisome aspect of the
order is that it has the potential to undo many reformative steps
taken by the Supreme Court all these decades. The famous Vishaka case
(1997), for instance, laid down rules to protect women at workplace.
In the absence of government action, the duty fell upon the court to
“legislate” the rules. The government did not protest, and women
welcomed it. If the court now reverses its policy, the judgment would
have to be reviewed.
The government quivers at the thought of passing a legislation to
enable and regulate adoption of orphans. But it was the Supreme Court
that “legislated” rules in this regard. The government has since been
merely following the norms set by the Supreme Court judgment in the LK
Pandey case (1987) — it has not passed a law even after decades. Some
other fields in which the court has taken affirmative steps are
environment, unemployment and poverty alleviation. The nation welcomed
the court’s initiative as the executive and the legislature had failed
to enforce the fundamental rights of the citizens.
The view of this two-judge bench contradicts the established opinion
in scores of judgments delivered by larger benches. In the C
Ravichandran Iyer vs AM Bhattacharjee case (1995), the court said that
the role of a judge is not merely to interpret the law but also to lay
new norms of law and mould the law to suit the changing social and
economic scenario to make the ideals enshrined in the Constitution a
meaningful reality. Society demands active judicial role which was
earlier considered exceptional but is now a routine. This view has not
so far been doubted in any later judgment.
Renowned jurists have long accepted the role of judges as law-makers.
John Austin said: “I cannot understand how any person who had
considered the subject can suppose that society could possibly have
gone on if judges had not legislated, or that there is any danger
whatever in allowing them that power which they have in fact
exercised, to make up for the negligence or the incapacity of the
avowed legislator.”
The legal system in England, which has been adopted by India and other
common-law countries, is based largely on judge-made law until around
the 17th century. US Supreme Court judges recently observed that not
only their court, but even the subordinate courts make laws because
there are situations which are not covered by any law and the judges
have to fill up the crevices. The questions now posed in the Kerala
University case, therefore, appear not only redundant but also
incapable of answers.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/m-j-antony-in-reverse-gear/378287/
chhotemianinshallah
Subodh Varma, TNN 3 December 2009, 03:10am IST
NEW DELHI: On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal Gas
Disaster, the Madhya Pradesh high court at Jabalpur dealt another blow
to the victims in their quest for justice. The victims of the world's
biggest ever industrial disaster have received only about one-fifth of
the compensation promised to them under the 1989 agreement.
Stung by the injustice of this paltry compensation, the victims had
approached the apex court, which had approved the 1989 agreement. It
was only in 2004 that the Supreme Court admitted a plea by gas victims
seeking to reopen the compensation issue. Three years later, in 2007,
the court rejected it, asking the victims to approach the state
government.
An application was then filed before welfare commissioner R S Garg who
rejected it in January this year. The harried and desperate victims
knocked on the doors of the MP high court to quash this order. But the
HC turned it down on November 30.
``It's back to square one. We will go back to the Supreme Court
again,'' says N D Jayaprakash of the Bhopal Gas Peedith Sangharsh
Sahyog Samiti, which is one of the victims' organisations spearheading
the struggle.
The gas leak from Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal in 1984
killed an estimated 20,000 people and left over 5.69 lakh people with
a range of injuries and disabilities. In 1989, the Supreme Court
approved a settlement between the central government and Carbide under
which the company agreed to pay $470 million (Rs 713 crore in the
exchange rate of the day) as compensation and the government agreed to
drop all civil and criminal proceedings against it.
The government declared that this compensation amount was to be
distributed amongst 1,05,000 injured and kin of 3000 dead. It soon
became clear that this figure of casualties was a gross under-
estimate, arrived at without any survey. Yet the government went ahead
and distributed the same amount among five times the number originally
stated.
Of the Rs 713 crore paid by Carbide, Rs 113 crore was paid to people
who had suffered property or livestock damage. The remaining Rs 600
crore was distributed among nearly six lakh victims or family members
of those who died. On an average, each victim has received Rs 12,410.
In contrast, in the high profile Uphaar tragedy of 1997, in which
after a sustained legal battle for over six years, the kin of those
who died got Rs 15-18 lakh and the injured got Rs 1 lakh each. Victims
were also paid 9% interest for 6 years elapsed in the court case. In
the Bhopal case, no interest was paid.
Criminal cases against Union Carbide officials too are still pending
after they were reopened in 1991. A non-bailable warrant against
Warren Anderson, chairman of Union Carbide was issued in 1992 by a
Bhopal court but remains unserved. Anderson was arrested three days
after the disaster and bailed out immediately, after which he fled the
country never to return.
Dow Chemical Company, which bought Union Carbide in 2001 has refused
to take any responsibility for pending matters and when a Bhopal court
asked them to appear in court in 2005, they obtained a stay from the
high court
chhotemianinshallah
Subodh Varma, TNN 3 December 2009, 04:52am IST
Twenty-five years have passed since that night of terror and death in
Bhopal, which saw a cloud of deadly gases explode out of a faulty tank
in a pesticide factory and silently spread into the homes of sleeping
people. Although no official count of casualties has ever been done,
estimates based on hospital and rehabilitation records show that about
20,000 people died and about 5.7 lakh suffered bodily damage, making
it by far the world’s worst industrial disaster ever.
Many who breathed the highly toxic cocktail that night suffered a
horrible death with multiple organ failure. Those who survived have
suffered multiple diseases for 25 years. A report of the Gas Tragedy
Relief Department of the state says that the morbidity rate
(occurrence of ailments) is nearly 20% among gas-affected persons
compared to about 5% among the unaffected population.
Following the disaster, there was an international outcry for relief
for the victims and punishment to those responsible for the gas
leakage. The pesticide plant from where the gas leaked belonged to
Union Carbide India, a subsidiary of the US-based Union Carbide
Company. They were asked to pay compensation and arrange for medical
treatment. The matter immediately got embroiled in legal
controversies. Thus began a long and painful struggle of the victims
for compensation, medical attention and rehabilitation that has
spluttered along for a quarter century.
In February 1989, the Supreme Court announced that it was approving a
settlement for Bhopal victims under which Union Carbide agreed to pay
Rs 713 crore for compensation to victims, while the government agreed
to drop all criminal cases against it. However, due to intense public
shock and anger at letting off the culprits, the court agreed to
reopen the criminal cases in 1991. Two installments of compensation —
of up to Rs 25,000 each — have been given till now to the injured, one
in 1994 and the next in 2004.
N D Jayaprakash of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Sangharsh Sahyog Samiti
(BGPSSS), one of the groups fighting for the rights of gas victims,
calls this a massive fraud because the number of gas-affected persons
was arbitrarily fixed by the government at 105,000, including about
3,000 dead. In reality, nearly 20,000 people have died, and 5.7 lakh
have suffered injuries. The compensation amount — Rs 713 crore, paid
by Union Carbide — was meant for about 1 lakh persons but has been
distributed among nearly 6 lakh people. Of the Rs 713 crores, Rs 113
crores was for loss of livestock and property. The balance Rs 600
crore distributed among 5.74 lakh persons works out to about Rs 12,410
per victim on average. In contrast, in the Uphaar tragedy in Delhi,
families of those who died got between Rs 15 lakh to Rs 18 lakh each,
while injured persons got Rs 1 lakh each. In addition, they got
interest at the rate of 9% per annum for the roughly six years that
the legal proceedings took.
Stung by this injustice, the victims approached the apex court, which
told them to approach the state government. In Bhopal, the Welfare
Commissioner rejected their demand. They appealed to the MP high
court. On November 30 this year, the HC too dismissed the petition.
“We will go back to the Supreme Court,” says Jayaprakash.
Even after 25 years, gas victims are suffering serious health
problems. On an average, 6,000 gas-affected patients visit hospitals
in Bhopal every day, that is, about 2 million visits per year. The
government adopted a one-size-fits-all policy for categorisation of
injuries — a person with compromised lungs may ultimately develop
other diseases, besides being unable to work fully. But such
distinctions were not maintained and meagre compensation was doled
out. Sadhana Pradhan, who has worked among the gas victims since the
disaster in 1984 points out that no line of treatment was ever
evolved. “The government has treated the victims on an ad hoc basis,”
she says. Medical records are yet not centralized as recommended by
the monitoring committee set up by the Supreme Court in 2004. As a
result, doctors have no idea about the patients’ history. “This has
led to development of multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB in many cases,”
says Dr Saxena, who spent 11 years in the government’s TB hospital in
Bhopal.
Another dimension of the ongoing tragedy of Bhopal is the poisonous
chemical waste lying around in the abandoned premises of the pesticide
plant. Several committees have inspected it and found 44,000 kgs of
tarry residues and 25,000 kgs of alpha naphthol lying in the open
since 1984. Various studies have established that the soil, ground
water, vegetables and even breast milk have traces of toxic
chemicals.
Abdul Jabbar Khan of the Bhopal Gas Peedith Mahila Udyog Sangathan
(BGPMUS) says that actually there is much more poisonous waste, which
the company used to routinely bury in the premises since 1969. “There
is no piped water supply. People still use contaminated groundwater
daily,” he says.
chhotemianinshallah
Suchandana Gupta, TNN 2 December 2009, 04:43am IST
BHOPAL: Yet another report on the persisting disastrous effects of the
gas tragedy has claimed that the erstwhile pesticide factory of Union
Carbide, from where the toxic methyl isocyanate leaked 25 years ago,
has been contaminating the soil and underground water in Madhya
Pradesh’s capital.
The new report by New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment
(CSE) released here on Tuesday said the ‘‘groundwater in areas even 3
km away from the factory site contains almost 40 times more pesticides
than normal Indian standards’’. ‘‘Continuous intake of this
groundwater can have drastic effects on the human body,’’ CSE’s
director and activist Sunita Narain claimed. ‘‘This is like slow
poisoning.’’
According to Narain, the CSE pollution monitoring labs have tested
water and soil samples from in and around the Union Carbide factory
and found high concentration of pesticides and heavy metals inside the
factory premises as well as the groundwater outside. All 11
groundwater samples collected by CSE found large quantities of
mercury, chlorinated benzene compounds and organochlorine, said the
CSE report.
Earlier research conducted by the National Environmental Engineering
Research Institute (NEERI), Pollution Control Board, City
Environmental Laboratory (Boston) and environmental NGO Greenpeace
also found extremely high levels of toxins like carbaryl, lindane and
alpha napthol in the soil and water around the factory areas.
Residents of 18 gas-affected areas continue to consume the water that
hese surveys have termed ‘‘contaminated’’. In July 1998, Union Carbide
handed over the factory to the Union government with 8,000 tonne of
toxic effluent and 10,000 tonne of toxic silt in ponds. Former Union
Carbide employee T R Chouhan had told a US court that between 1969 and
1984, the factory had dumped over 1,900 tonne of chemicals in and
around the factory. Another 390 tonne of toxic waste, which was the
raw components for the pesticide, has been packed and kept for
disposal. NGOs claim that this poisonous waste has spread through the
soil and water making Bhopal gas tragedy ‘‘not a one-time but a
continuing disaster for human life”.
Union Carbide manufactured three kinds of pesticides in this factory
including Carbaryl (Sevin), Aldicarb (temik) and a third formula of
carbaryl with gamma-hexachlorocyclohexane (Sevidol). ‘‘The plant used
heavy metals like mercury and chromium. Most of these products and
elements are persistent, toxic and harmful for the human body. We
decided to test for these chemicals. The water in Shiv Nagar, which is
3 km away from the factory, tested the highest concentration of
carbaryl at 0.011ppm which is 110 times the normal standard. Lindane
was found at 0.004 ppm, 40 times higher than normal and mercury was
0.024 ppm, 24 times greater than normal.’’ Narain said 25 years after
the worst industrial disaster, the Union government thinks that the
situation is far from alarming. She drew attention to the remarks by
Union minister of state for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh, who
had said: ‘‘I held the toxic waste in my hand. I am still alive and
not coughing. It’s 25 years after the gas tragedy. Let us move
ahead.’’
Narain argued that the Union government was ignorant about the
difference between acute toxicity and chronic toxicity. ‘‘No one has
explained to Jairam Ramesh that when victims inhaled the gas and died,
it was acute toxicity. Chronic toxicity, on the other hand, is a long-
term slow poisoning. We are talking about chronic toxicity and its
harmful effects on the body,’’ she said.
chhotemianinshallah
IANS 2 December 2009, 01:51pm IST
BANGALORE: The deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas released by the
Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal this day 25 years ago affected
even the unborn, researchers say.
The toxic gas altered the immune system of those who were still in
their mothers' wombs when the disaster struck, according to a recent
study by researchers at the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research
Centre (BMHRC) in Bhopal.
"Our study shows, for the first time, that in-utero MIC exposure
during the Bhopal gas tragedy has caused a persistent immune system
hyper-responsiveness in affected individuals," Pradyumna Kumar Mishra
told IANS. The findings have been published in the journal
Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Whether this "immune hyper-responsiveness" has any clinical
implications will be clear only after follow-up of the exposed
individuals, the BMHRC researcher said.
The release of 30-40 tonnes of MIC spreading over approximately 75 sq
km killed at least 3,500 and injured thousands more. There are more
than 500,000 registered survivors of the tragedy, Mishra said.
The survivors continue to experience higher incidence of health
problems, including respiratory, neurological, psychiatric and
ophthalmic symptoms, Mishra said.
To understand the long-term implications of MIC exposure, doctors at
BMHRC have conducted chromosomal studies in cultured mammalian cells
using MIC as an experimental agent. "The results of the study have
provided evidence to hitherto unknown molecular mechanisms of
immunotoxic consequences of MIC exposure at a genomic level," he
said.
According to Mishra, MIC had played havoc with the reproductive health
of women and their girl children.
Menstrual abnormalities, vaginal discharge and premature menopause
have emerged as common problems. "Besides affecting the reproductive
health of the women, these conditions are also leading to social
problems in conservative communities," he said.
Mishra said that investigations conducted so far at BMHRC and other
places have raised a new question: for how long the gas victims would
continue to suffer from multi-system disorders and whether future
generations would also be affected by these abnormalities.
"In-depth molecular studies of ocular, respiratory, reproductive,
immunological, genetic and psychological health must be continued if
we wish to understand the extent and severity of long-term effects
associated with the disaster," Mishra said.
He pointed out that the importance of such experimental studies cannot
be understated "since any alterations at genomic level can have long-
term health consequences that may range from accelerated ageing,
carcinogenesis, immuno-compromised states and, more importantly,
vertical transmission of genetic aberrations."
chhotemianinshallah
Suchandana Gupta, TNN 1 December 2009, 05:25am IST
BHOPAL: Eighty-year-old Maqsuda Bi still comes and stands outside the
welfare commissioner’s office, asking to be compensated like other
victims of the deadly methylisocynate gas that swirled through this
erstwhile city of nawabs 25 years ago, killing an estimated 20,000
people and maiming 5,69,160.
‘‘I have all the relevant papers including my ration card and doctors’
prescriptions. Everyone in my family, including my grandchildren, have
got compensation. Why have I been ignored?’’ she asks. The
‘‘compensation’’, of course, was so paltry that it had led to a fresh
round of litigations.
‘‘I was with my family that night in our house in Ashoka Garden. My
husband’s lungs were badly damaged and he was bed-ridden for 10 years
coughing blood. He died in 1995. I am still fighting for my due,’’ she
told TOI. Badli Bai (50) of Rajendra Nagar has a similar story. Her
file was lost from the settlement court. She has the documents to
prove herself a victim. The doctors certified that her lungs were
damaged. She received interim relief of Rs 200 per month after the gas
leak, but not a paisa after that.
‘‘I am diseased. No gas victim stays healthy. We all suffer from
numerous ailments. I need the money to buy medicines. Hospitals won’t
treat me for free unless I am a confirmed gas victim. The only proof
of this is if one gets compensation. But the court says my file is
lost,’’ Badli Bai says. While there are more than 40 cases regarding
non-payment of compensation to victims before the high court since
2004, victims’ NGOs are still filing petitions arguing that the
recompense was insufficient and delayed.
‘‘The Centre got into a settlement with the Union Carbide Corporation,
USA, without the victims’ consent,’’ said Hamida Bi, a gas victim and
activist. ‘‘Carbide paid Rs 713 crore (at 1989 prices) on the
assumption that only 3,000 persons had died and 1,05,000 were injured.
The actual figure is five times more. The government admitted that
4,69,367 victims were kept out of the settlement.
“The compensation amount that was to be distributed among 1,08,000
persons has now been disbursed among 15,200 dead and 5,69,160 injured.
The average compensation works out to Rs 12,410 per victim at the 1989
value of the rupee. Compared to this, the US government paid an
average of $1.8 million per victim of 9/11,’’ she adds.
‘‘Those who died that night were fortunate,’’ said Husna Bano of Aish
Bagh, adding, ‘‘The gas leak left us like walking corpses. I had a
seven kg fibroid in my stomach which left the doctors researching on
the after-effects of MIC. I do some stitching work to run the family.
If I earn Rs 50, I spend Rs 35 on treatment. We spend more money on
medicine than on food.’’
‘Doctors treat us like untouchables’
BHOPAL: Rafiq Khan (52) endured the lethal billow of methyl isocyanate
(MIC) gas that leaked out of the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal on
December 3, 1984. Twenty-five years later, Khan, who is now also a
diabetic, continues to suffer from severe pulmonary ailment as,
ironically, a hospital meant for thousands left critically ill by MIC
exposure, has shut its door on him.
‘‘Doctors don’t even talk to us. My father has the documents including
the victim ID, but the hospital — Bhopal Memorial Hospital and
Research Centre — treats us like untouchables and refuses to admit
him,’’ alleged Khan’s son, Faizan. ‘‘We can’t even sit near the
doctor; the hospital staff is so highhanded,’’ alleged Faizan. Faizan
said Khan also suffers from kidney dysfunction and needs dialysis
twice a week. ‘‘I work as a van driver and need Rs 2,000 weekly for
dialysis to keep my father alive. We’ve sold our valuables and
borrowed Rs 60,000. People have stopped giving credit because they
know we can’t pay back,’’ he said.
He said Khan was diagnosed with kidney dysfunction last year and put
on dialysis just twice and then discharged. ‘‘Since then, they have
refused to put him on dialysis despite the fact that the hospital is
meant for the gas victims,’’ he said. ‘‘The victims are entitled for a
lifetime of medical treatment at the hospital, but we were refused a
third dialysis.’’
He said far from curing him, the hospital’s faulty laser operation
left him blind and the family had to get his eyes operated at a
private hospital.
chhotemianinshallah
IANS 2 December 2009, 01:55pm IST
NEW DELHI: Going beyond film screenings and photo exhibitions,
survivors of the Bhopal gas leak started a campaign here, appealing to
the youth not to work for Dow Chemicals, the company that has bought
Union Carbide, which was responsible for the disaster 25 years ago.
"The campaign hopes to sensitise them about an issue which seems to be
remote and unconnected with them. Through this initiative, we aim to
inspire the young brigade to respond to the appeal and pledge saying,
'we won't work for Dow'," Javed Naqi of the International Campaign for
Justice in Bhopal told IANS.
He said this would "pressurise Dow to meet the demands of the victims
in Bhopal in a speedier and transparent manner".
The Bhopal gas leak -- the world's worst industrial disaster -- took
place the night between Dec 2-3, 1984, when tonnes of methyl
isocyanate spewed out of the Union Carbide pesticide plant, killing
more than 3,500 people instantly and maiming thousands more.
Children of survivors of the Bhopal gas leak Tuesday started a three-
day caravan campaign, called Bhopal Blues on Wheels, in Delhi in which
they will visit several colleges, telling stories of the disaster and
showcasing a mobile photo exhibition to commemorate the 25th
anniversary.
Naqi said the purpose of the pledge campaign was much more that just
getting victims' justice.
"It also focuses on raising our voices against irresponsibility of big
corporates towards people and the environment and that we need to take
action now to prevent more such Bhopals from happening in future apart
from raising the cry for justice for the people of Bhopal," he said.
chhotemianinshallah
Suchandana Gupta, TNN 15 September 2009, 02:27am IST
BHOPAL: Annoyed over Union minister of state for forests and
environment Jairam Ramesh's remarks over the world's worst industrial
disaster that killed over 15,000 people and left more than 5 lakh
victims 25 years ago, Bhopal gas victims on Monday burned his effigy
alleging he behaved like "a spokesman of Union Carbide Corporation''.
The minister on his visit to the closed UCC factory in Bhopal on
Saturday had picked up a handful of toxic waste in the premises and
said: "I held the toxic waste in my hand. I'm still alive and not
coughing.'' Later he said the "truth'' about the gas tragedy and how
it occurred were "extremely complex'' and "uncomfortable''. He also
advised 25 years after the tragedy, it was time to move on.
On Monday the gas victims backed by NGOs took out a protest march and
burned the minister's effigy. They alleged by making irresponsible
comments, he was weakening the criminal case against the American
multinational company and its senior executives which is under trial.
They said they would send complaints to President Pratibha Patil,
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi about
Ramesh's remarks. "We have been fighting for justice for a quarter of
a century. Instead of supporting us in our struggle for justice
against a killer American multinational, our politicians have
constantly betrayed us,'' said Hamida Bi, a gas victim.
"They did not arrest Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson when he
came to India right after the incident... again they failed to
extradite and bring him to our courts to face trail. We have seen our
children die and cough blood for years. How can our ministers be so
insensitive. Is he (Jairam) ridiculing our suffering?'' Hamida asked.
"We suffer from chronic pulmonary diseases, fight cancer and have
physically challenged children. How can he ask us to just forget and
move on? We have been neglected by our own governments because 90% of
the victims come from economically weaker sections. Could any minister
make a similar comment about Delhi's Uphar cinema victims or 9/11
casualties? Why this discrimination?'' she asked.
NGOs feared Ramesh's comments could weaken the criminal cases against
UCC in district courts, the Madhya Pradesh high court and the Supreme
Court. "There is an affidavit filed by the Union government. CBI has
filed a chargesheet against three companies and nine top UCC
officials,'' said Bhopal Gas Peedith Mahila Udyog Sangathan convener
Abdul Jabbar.
"In the chargesheet, CBI pointed out 32 defects in the pesticides
plant. It also mentions about `no maintenance and several small
accidents' which had occurred before that night of December 2-3, 1984.
Recently, the court issued a fresh arrest warrant against Anderson.
Under these circumstances, if a Union minister says that the truth
about the gas tragedy is complicated and it's time to move on, it not
only hurts the sentiments of the victims but harms the criminal
case.'' Jabbar said.
bademiyansubhanallah
IANS First Published : 03 Dec 2009 12:09:42 AM IST
Last Updated : 03 Dec 2009 12:13:54 AM IST
BHOPAL: As the sun went down on Bhopal Wednesday, victims of the gas
tragedy set out on a torch light rally from one landmark, Bhopal
Talkies, to another unfortunate landmark - the now defunct Union
Carbide factory.
The procession was taken out by the Bhopal Group of Information and
Action (BGIA) - working for victims of the gas disaster that occurred
at the factory exactly 25 years ago - and groups affiliated to it.
"People living next to the Union Carbide factory - where the ground
water is contaminated by poison from the hazardous chemical waste of
the factory - will also join the march while the children who were
poisoned by contaminated ground water form a prominent part of the
rally," said Rachna Dhingra of the BGIA.
Another torch light profession was taken out separately by Bhopal Gas
Peedit Mahila Udhyog Sangathan (BGPMUS) led by activist Abdul Jabbar.
"Since Mashaal (torch) means Jaagte Raho (keep awake), our procession
is aimed at appealing to the people to beware of the designs of
various governments who are soft on Union Carbide, which has taken the
lives of thousands of people and even now people are still dying,"
Jabbar said.
The organisations condemned the union government for its alleged
failure to take action on the non-bailable arrest warrant issued in
July this year against Warren Anderson, former chairman of Union
Carbide.
The survivors have also been demanding immediate setting up of an
Empowered Commission on Bhopal gas tragedy for long-term medical care,
economic and social rehabilitation and supply of safe drinking water,
besides cleaning up of the hazardous waste.
They said that 15 months have passed since the prime minister gave a
written promise regarding setting up the commission, but it has not
yet been formed.
"The problems that we faced at the time of the gas tragedy are nothing
in comparison to what we are facing now. The government is not
providing us with proper medicines. We don't have money to get
ourselves treated by private doctors. The situation is just worsening
now," said Sayyed Irfan, a victim of the gas tragedy.
Thousands of tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC) spewed out of the Union
Carbide factory on the night of Dec 2-3, 1984, killing over 3,500
people instantly and maiming several thousands for life.
bademiyansubhanallah
K.S. Jayaraman First Published : 02 Dec 2009 08:40:11 PM IST
(K.S. Jayaraman can be contacted at kill...@hotmail.com)
IANS
Sid Harth
View as Slide Show
New Delhi: A quarter century after the world's worst industrial
disaster killed thousands in Bhopal, India is yet to extradite the
main accused, American Warren Anderson. In a case that seems to be
going nowhere, India issued a fresh arrest warrant in July this year
and the Ministry of External Affairs is pursuing the matter with the
US administration, officials here said.
"Anderson never appeared before the court to face trial. Therefore,
his extradition request was sent to the external affairs ministry Sep
23, 1993. It was remitted back by the US on May 9, 2002, requesting us
to re-examine the matter," Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)
director Ashwini Kumar said.
Image: Inside the killer factory
Text: IANS
Images: Anil Gulati
A few months later we again sent a revised extradition request along
with an arrest warrant,' Kumar explained. 'A fresh arrest warrant was
again issued against him in July 2009. We are pursuing his extradition
matter with the US authorities through the foreign ministry. His trail
has been separated from the rest of accused.'
Anderson was chief executive officer of the Union Carbide Corp (UCC),
now owned by Dow Chemical Co, when tonnes of poisonous methyl-
isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal
on the night of Dec 2, 1984, killing over 3,500 people instantly.
Thousands were severely injured and handicapped. NGOs estimate that
the death toll rose sharply to 10,000 within 72 hours and that the
number now stands at over 25,000.
Image: Statue built outside the Union carbide factory brings out the
pain of wailing mother and her two children
Bhopal water still toxic, 25 years on: study
The Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL) factory was set up in 1969. In
UCIL, 50.9 percent was owned by Union Carbide Corp (UCC) and 49.1
percent by Indian investors, including public sector financial
institutions.
The CBI chief said it was found during investigation that UCC was to
provide safety measures to store MIC as well as its operating
standards to UCIL.
'But due to inherent defects in the design of the UCIL plant, which
were in the knowledge of the accused persons, MIC gas leaked,
resulting in the death of (thousands of) human beings and numerous
animals besides causing grievous injuries to thousands,' Kumar said.
Image: Picture of the Union carbide factory after many years
Indians still haunted by worst industrial accident
After the disaster, a case was registered by the Madhya Pradesh police
against officials of UCIL. It was transferred to the CBI on Dec 6,
1984.
Three years later, the CBI filed its charge sheet in the court of the
additional session judge in Bhopal under Indian Penal Code sections
304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 324 (voluntarily
causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means), 326 (voluntarily causing
grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means), 429 (mischief by
killing, poisoning, maiming animals) against Anderson and seven other
people.
Image: She was 15 years old and was a polio victim when the gas
tradegy stuck. She lost her father thereafter and was staying with her
mother, who also was victim of gas tradegy, who she also lost few
months back. She stays in one room house which was made for gas
victims but living now is difficult. She on her own never got any
relief as papers were not in order. She survives on Rs 275 per month
pension she gets as she was disabled. She suffers from the breathing
problem till date.
Gas tragedy leaves legacy of 'Bhopal brides' 25 years on
However, the Supreme Court later amended the charges to sections 304-A
(causing death by negligence), 336 (acts endangering life or personal
safety of others), 337 (causing hurt by act endangering life or
personal safety of others) and 338 (causing grievous hurt by acts
endangering life or personal safety of others).
Following the apex court direction, the court of the chief judicial
magistrate in Bhopal framed the charges afresh.
Image: slogans painted over the walls near the main gate
Survivors of Bhopal gas tragedy launch weeklong protest
The CBI chief said that during the trial, 178 prosecution witnesses
were examined and 3,008 documents exhibited. In November 2005, the
prosecution evidence was closed and statements of the accused were
recorded under the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC).
'The case is now pending at the stage of defence evidence,' he added.
Nityanand Jayaraman, a social activist working for the Bhopal gas
victims, said not a single accused had been sentenced so far.
Image: Painting, which is painted on the wall behind the statue to
mark 25 years of struggle and pain by art makers.
Bhopal gas survivors mark 25 years of agony
'The judiciary is moving at an astonishing slow pace. All the Indian
accused are out on bail and Anderson does not appear before the court.
He is enjoying the government's protection as India does not want to
upset the US,' Jayaraman said.
'All the time we hear that the government is trying to extradite
Anderson through the external affairs ministry. But nothing happens
because of the lack of political will. Our government has separate
policies for different people. They did everything to extradite
mobster Abu Salem but have not moved even an inch to get Anderson,' he
added.
Image: Children climb over the broken wall on which slogan is painted
to see inside the factory premise.
Victims of Bhopal gas tragedy criticize move to open factory premises
bademiyansubhanallah
A Cloud Still Hangs Over Bhopal
By SUKETU MEHTA
Published: December 2, 2009
IN the Mumbai kindergarten my son went to, the children never had to
clean up after themselves; that was the servants’ job. So I really
liked the school my son attended when we moved back to Brooklyn, where
the teachers made the children tidy up at the end of the day. “Cleanup
time, cleanup time!” my 6-year-old sang, joyfully gathering his
scraps. It’s a wonderful American tradition: you always clean up the
mess you made.
This is the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster, an epic mess
that started one night when a pesticide plant owned by the American
chemical giant Union Carbide leaked a cloud of poisonous gas. Before
the sun rose, almost 4,000 human beings capable of love and anguish
sank to their knees and did not get up. Half a million more fell ill,
many with severely damaged lungs and eyes.
An additional 15,000 people have since died from the aftereffects, and
10 to 30 people are said to die every month from exposure to the
hundreds of tons of toxic waste left over in the former factory. But
amazingly, the site still has not been cleaned up, because Dow
Chemical, which since acquired Union Carbide, refuses to accept any
responsibility. The groundwater is contaminated; children of the
survivors suffer from genetic abnormalities; and the victims have long
since run out of their measly compensation and are begging on the
streets.
I have traveled to Bhopal and seen the post-apocalyptic devastation,
seen the sick, seen the factory. Methyl isocyanate is a deadly
chemical used to kill insects. The night that 40 tons of it wafted out
of the factory is, for the survivors, a fulcrum in time, marking the
before and after in their lives. They still talk about “the gas” as if
it were an organism they know well — how it killed buffalo and pigs,
but spared chickens; how it traveled toward Jahangirabad and Hamidia
Road, while ignoring other parts of the city; how it clung to the wet
earth in some places but hovered at waist level in others; how it
blackened all the leaves of a peepul tree; how they could watch it
move down the other side of the road, like a rain cloud seen from a
sunny spot.
All over India, when misfortune strikes — when a child is ill, for
example — people burn chilies to drive away the evil eye. The gas
smelled like chilies burning, and people said to one another, it must
be a powerfully evil eye that’s being driven away, the stench is so
strong.
Fleeing the gas, the Bhopalis clutched their children. Some babies
fell, gasping, and their parents had to choose which ones to carry on
their shoulders. One image still comes up over and over in their
dreams: in the stampede, a thousand people are stepping on their
child’s body.
In 2001, the maker of napalm married the bane of Bhopal: Dow Chemical
bought Union Carbide for $11.6 billion and promptly distanced itself
from the disaster. If Union Carbide was at fault, that was too bad; it
had just ceased to exist. In 2002, Dow set aside $2.2 billion to cover
potential liabilities arising from Union Carbide’s American asbestos
production. By comparison, the total settlement for Bhopal was $470
million. The families of the dead got an average of $2,200; the
wounded got $550; a Dow spokeswoman explained, that amount “is plenty
good for an Indian.” As Representative Frank Pallone of New Jersey
observed in 2006, “In Bhopal, some of the world’s poorest people are
being mistreated by one of the world’s richest corporations.”
Union Carbide and Dow were allowed to get away with it because of the
international legal structures that protect multinationals from
liability. Union Carbide sold its Indian subsidiary and pulled out of
India. Warren Anderson, the Union Carbide chief executive at the time
of the gas leak, lives in luxurious exile in the Hamptons, even though
there’s an international arrest warrant out for him for culpable
homicide. The Indian government has yet to pursue an extradition
request. Imagine if an Indian chief executive had jumped bail for
causing an industrial disaster that killed tens of thousands of
Americans. What are the chances he’d be sunning himself in Goa?
The Indian government, fearful of scaring away foreign investors, has
not pushed the issue with American authorities. Dow has used a kind of
blackmail with the Indians; a 2006 letter from Andrew Liveris, the
chief executive, to India’s ambassador to the United States asked for
guarantees that Dow would not be held liable for the cleanup, and
thanked him for his “efforts to ensure that we have the appropriate
investment climate.”
What’s missing in the whole sad story is any sense of a human
connection between the faceless people who run the corporation and the
victims. In 1995, a Bhopali woman named Sajida Bano sent a handwritten
letter to Union Carbide. The factory had killed her husband in 1981 in
an accident, and then, on the night of the disaster, her 4-year-old
son. “You put your hand on your heart and think,” she wrote, “if you
are a human being: if this happened to you, how would your wife and
children feel?” She never received a response.
The survivors of Bhopal want only to be treated as human beings — not
victims, not greedy money-grabbers, just human beings who’ve gone
through hell and are entitled to a measure of dignity. That includes
concrete things like cleaning up the mess and providing health care
for the sick, and also something more abstract but equally important —
an acknowledgment that a wrong was done to them, and an apology, which
Bhopalis have yet to receive.
That was another fine thing my son learned in the Brooklyn school:
when you’ve done something bad, you should say you’re sorry. After a
quarter of a century, Dow should acknowledge that it is responsible
for a very big mess. And now, it’s cleanup time.
Suketu Mehta, a journalism professor at New York University, is the
author of “Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/opinion/03mehta.html?ref=opinion
bademiyansubhanallah
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
No one knows for sure what caused the lethal leak of methyl isocyanate
from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in December 1984, and no one
knows for sure how many people died.
The victims were sleeping through a winter's night when the gas
infiltrated their homes -- and lungs and eyes. Within days, some 3,000
people were dead. The official cause was ''poisoning by irrespirable
gases.''
About 2,000 more deaths were directly attributed over the next few
years to the leak, according to the Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief
Department. By the official reckoning, 578,000 people were affected.
That was the number finally awarded compensation by specially created
claims tribunals.
Read More...
Long before the antiglobalization movement gained prominence, and
before chief executives in handcuffs became a news staple, Union
Carbide became, for many, an emblem of the evils of multinationalism.
The company has always claimed that the leak was a result of sabotage,
but no one has been charged. Evidence has pointed to poor safety
procedures and maintenance, and advocacy groups have lobbied for years
for tougher action against Union Carbide and its chief executive at
the time, Warren Anderson. The company paid the government $470
million to settle the victims' claims. But only a portion of the money
was distributed, in many cases at $550 per recipient. Quite literally
adding insult to injury, some tribunal officials extracted bribes from
victims for processing their claims.
As for the site itself and the slums that had grown up around it, the
neglect over the years was nearly total. In the summer of 2008, almost
a quarter -century after the leak, hundreds of tons of toxic remains
had yet to be carted away, and the factory grounds had yet to be
cleaned up. There had been no examination of to what extent, over 20
years, the toxic waste had seeped into the soil and water, and what
damage it has wrought on the health of the people who live nearby,
except that in desultory checks over the years, a state environmental
agency turned up pesticide residues in the neighborhood wells, far
exceeding permissible levels.
Bhopal Seethes, Pained and Poor 18 Years Later
By AMY WALDMAN
Eighteen years after thousands of people died here in a cloud of gas,
the only monument to their memory is a rain-worn statue of a mother
holding a baby and covering her face as another child hides behind her
skirts. No one knows for sure what caused the lethal leak of methyl
isocyanate from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in October 1984, and
no one knows for sure how many people died.
September 21, 2002WorldNewsForeign Desk
India Disaster: Chronicle of a Nightmare
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
It began without warning in the dead of night, while the vast and
crowded slums of Bhopal, India, lay in slumber, dreaming the troubled
dreams of want and hope, heedless of the danger in the wind scything
over the silent metropolis.
December 10, 1984WorldChronologyARTICLES ABOUT BHOPAL
Newest First | Oldest First
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Next >>
A Cloud Still Hangs Over Bhopal
By SUKETU MEHTA
A gas disaster that happened 25 years ago has not been cleaned up
because Dow Chemical has not acknowledged responsibility.
December 3, 2009
MORE ON BHOPAL AND: FACTORIES AND MANUFACTURING, CHILDREN AND YOUTH,
HAZARDOUS AND TOXIC SUBSTANCES, ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY, UNION CARBIDE
CORP, DOW CHEMICAL CO LETTER; Cleaning Up Bhopal
Kartikay Singh letter says it is time for Indian government and Dow
Chemical to come together to clear waste in Bhopal safely rather than
playing blame game (July 7 article)
July 9, 2008
MORE ON BHOPAL AND: PESTICIDES, HAZARDOUS AND TOXIC SUBSTANCES, METHYL
ISOCYANATE, INDIA, DOW CHEMICAL CO, UNION CARBIDE, SINGH, KARTIKAY
Decades Later, Toxic Sludge Torments Bhopal
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Hundreds of tons of waste still languish on the grounds of a pesticide
factory in India, the site of a notorious disaster.
July 7, 2008
MORE ON BHOPAL AND: PESTICIDES, WATER POLLUTION, ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY,
POISONING AND POISONS, DISASTERS, HAZARDOUS AND TOXIC SUBSTANCES,
CHEMICALS, METHYL ISOCYANATE, POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT, WASTE MATERIALS
AND DISPOSAL, INDIA, UNION CARBIDE CORP, DOW CHEMICAL COMPANY
Toxic Waste Plagues Bhopal
Poisoned
By LIGAYA MISHAN
A chemical disaster disfigured the narrator of this fiercely polemical
story set in a fictionalized Bhopal.
March 9, 2008
MORE ON BHOPAL AND: REVIEWS, MAN BOOKER PRIZE, BOOKS AND LITERATURE,
INDIA, SINHA, INDRA Safety Since Bhopal
American Institute of Chemical Engineers president-elect Jeff Siirola
letter responds to Nov 30 article; holds that disaster in Bhopal,
India, was tragic but powerful catalyst for change in chemical
industry
December 5, 2004
MORE ON BHOPAL AND: PESTICIDES, ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY, HAZARDOUS AND
TOXIC SUBSTANCES, METHYL ISOCYANATE, FACTORIES AND INDUSTRIAL PLANTS,
INDIA, UNION CARBIDE CORP, SIIROLA, JEFF BBC Falls Prey to Hoax on
Anniversary of Bhopal Disaster
By ALAN COWELL
The BBC broadcasted an interview with a man pretending to be a
spokesman for Dow Chemical who claimed the company had taken the blame
for the chemical plant disaster in Bhopal, India, in 1984.
December 4, 2004
MORE ON BHOPAL AND: PESTICIDES, ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY, HOAXES,
HAZARDOUS AND TOXIC SUBSTANCES, CHEMICALS, METHYL ISOCYANATE,
FACTORIES AND INDUSTRIAL PLANTS, INDIA, DOW CHEMICAL CO, BRITISH
BROADCASTING CORP, BBC WORLDWIDE LTD, UNION CARBIDE CORP, DOW CHEMICAL
COMPANY Bhopal Victims Not Fully Paid, Rights Group Says
By SARITHA RAI
Victims of the world's worst industrial disaster, which killed more
than 7,000 people in Bhopal, India, have been poorly compensated and
the companies have gone unpunished.
November 30, 2004
MORE ON BHOPAL AND: PESTICIDES, ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY, HAZARDOUS AND
TOXIC SUBSTANCES, CHEMICALS, METHYL ISOCYANATE, FACTORIES AND
INDUSTRIAL PLANTS, FREEDOM AND HUMAN RIGHTS, INDIA, DOW CHEMICAL CO,
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, UNION CARBIDE CORP World Briefing | Asia:
India: Compensation For Bhopal Victims
By DAVID ROHDE (NYT)
Indian Supreme Court rules that $325 million in compensation should be
paid directly to victims of 1984 Bhopal gas leak at Union Carbide
plant; at least 5,000 people were killed in one of worst industrial
accidents in history
July 20, 2004
MORE ON BHOPAL AND: PESTICIDES, ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY, METHYL
ISOCYANATE, POISON GASES, FACTORIES AND INDUSTRIAL PLANTS, DECISIONS
AND VERDICTS, INDIA, UNION CARBIDE CORP, RHODE, DAVID World Business
Briefing | Asia: India: Bhopal Extradition Sought
By SARITHA RAI (NYT)
India asks US government to extradite Warren M Anderson, who was
chairman of Union Carbide during toxic gas leak at company's factory
in Bhopal in December 1984; warrant has been pending against Anderson
since April 1992 in criminal case in which he is charged with culpable
homicide; more than 3,000 people were killed when deadly gas was
released from storage tank at plant; thousands more died later from
aftereffects; case is being pressed by organizations representing
survivors
July 3, 2003
MORE ON BHOPAL AND: PESTICIDES, ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY, EXTRADITION,
HAZARDOUS AND TOXIC SUBSTANCES, METHYL ISOCYANATE, SUITS AND
LITIGATION, FACTORIES AND INDUSTRIAL PLANTS, GASES, INDIA, UNION
CARBIDE CORP, ANDERSON, WARREN M Compressed Data; Bhopal Critics in
Web Hoax Against Dow Chemical
By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH
Yes Men sends out hoax e-mail press release purporting to be from Dow
Chemical, which now owns Union Carbide, directing journalists to Web
site supposedly explaining why Dow refuses to clean up site of lethal
gas spill at Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, 18 years ago or
help people who remain sick from spill
December 9, 2002
MORE ON BHOPAL AND: PESTICIDES, HOAXES, HAZARDOUS AND TOXIC
SUBSTANCES, METHYL ISOCYANATE, COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET, INDIA, DOW
CHEMICAL CO, YES MEN, UNION CARBIDE CORP After Bhopal
Robert D Kennedy letter contends Sept 21 article about Warren
Anderson, Union Carbide's former chmn, does not paint complete picture
of Anderson--man of 'integrity and compassion'; notes efforts Anderson
made through the years to help victims of Bhopal tragedy
September 28, 2002
MORE ON BHOPAL AND: PESTICIDES, UNION CARBIDE CORP, KENNEDY, ROBERT D,
ANDERSON, WARREN Bhopal Seethes, Pained and Poor 18 Years Later
By AMY WALDMAN
People of Bhopal, India, are still seething over 1984 accident in
which lethal cloud of methyl isocyanate leaked from Union Carbide
plant, killing unknown number of people and sickening many thousands
of others; photos; map; group has pursued company's then-chairman
Warren Anderson, now retired, relentlessly, keeping alive court case
that Indian government would like to end; 1987 study found 30,000
people with solid evidence of damage, but victims also blame gas for
every ailment, leaving burea...
September 21, 2002
MORE ON BHOPAL AND: PESTICIDES, ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY, HAZARDOUS AND
TOXIC SUBSTANCES, METHYL ISOCYANATE, SUITS AND LITIGATION, INDIA,
UNION CARBIDE CORP, ANDERSON, WARREN
Indian court rejects prosecutor's bid to reduce culpable homicide
charge against former Union Carbide Corp chairman Warren Anderson for
1984 gas leak in Bhopal, which killed thousands, to 'hurt by
negligence;' he has refused to appear in court since case opened in
1992
August 29, 2002
MORE ON BHOPAL AND: PESTICIDES, ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY, METHYL
ISOCYANATE, INDIA, UNION CARBIDE CORP, ANDERSON, WARREN M
By AMY WALDMAN (NYT)
Two former employees of Union Carbide tell court in India that safety
equipment that should have prevented lethal leak at company's Bhopal
factory in 1984 was not working and that tanks storing gas at factory
were filled above capacity; victims groups are fighting government
effort to have charge in case reduced to 'rash and negligent act' from
'culpable homicide,' charge that would allow Warren Anderson, former
Union Carbide chairman, to avoid extradition to India
August 28, 2002
MORE ON BHOPAL AND: ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY, EXTRADITION, PESTICIDES AND
PESTS, METHYL ISOCYANATE, UNION CARBIDE CORP, ANDERSON, WARREN M
Carbide Helps Ease Bhopal's 'Second Tragedy'
Letter from Union Carbide Corp aide Dr Jean B Case on Jan 15 editorial
on 1984 toxic gas leak from Union Carbide's Bhopal, India, plant
January 23, 1997
MORE ON BHOPAL AND: ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY, HAZARDOUS AND TOXIC
SUBSTANCES, PESTICIDES AND PESTS, INDIA, UNION CARBIDE CORP, CASE,
JEAN B
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/india/bhopal/index.html
bademiyansubhanallah
The government's behaviour compounds the scandal
Business Standard / New Delhi December 04, 2009, 0:25 IST
Was Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh right when, holding the toxic
waste at the Union Carbide/Dow Chemicals’ factory in Bhopal, he made
light of the problem, saying: “I held the toxic waste in my hand… I’m
still alive and am not coughing?” Is the state government in Bhopal
right when it cites a series of reports, including one from the
Defence Research and Development Establishment (DRDE) in Gwalior, to
say that the level of toxicity is less than that of table salt? Or is
the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) right when it takes soil
and water samples and says the toxicity in even areas far away from
the site is way above permissible levels, a sign that the toxicity has
seeped into the groundwater?
Scientists will differ in their interpretation, and argue about the
difference between acute toxicity and chronic toxicity. But anyone
visiting Bhopal can see the havoc created among lakhs of people.
Ironically, a report released by the state government recognised the
significantly higher level of morbidity in even those born after the
disaster 25 years ago. It said that while this was not due to the gas
leak, a separate investigation was called for to understand the reason
behind this. It is here that, more than Union Carbide (or Dow, which
bought it out), the government is guilty of criminal apathy. There is,
of course, the issue of whether Dow should pay for the cleaning up of
Bhopal and of how, while it has set aside $2.2 billion to deal with
potential lawsuits against Carbide’s asbestos production, it refuses
to recognise any liability for Bhopal. It is also true that, while the
original settlement by the government with Carbide in 1989 fixed the
number of dead at 3,000 and the number of gas-affected at 105,000, the
number today is 20,000 dead and around 570,000 affected. In other
words, the compensation is hopelessly inadequate. If one assumes that
Dow will continue to insist that it has no liability, isn’t it the
government’s job to provide medical facilities and compensate victims,
and worry separately about whether it can recover the money from Dow/
Carbide? Far from doing any such thing, the government has, in fact,
distributed just around half the compensation and the interest that
has accrued upon it. Indeed, the government stopped all
epidemiological studies way back in 1994. According to CSE, when the
Prime Minister’s Office wanted long-term medical research on the
survivors in 2006, the Indian Council of Medical Research was
reluctant to do this with the Rs 1.23 crore that the state government
wanted to pay, and the project has languished.
The story on cleaning up the toxic waste is no better since the waste
remains where it was, slowly leaching into the soil. The government
wanted Dow to deposit Rs 100 crore — in May 2005, it moved the court
urging it to direct Dow to deposit the money. But even if the clean-up
costs Rs 1,000 crore, as one Greenpeace estimate suggests, the
government has the obligation to clean up, and collect or not collect
from Dow later.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/night-without-end/378526/
bademiyansubhanallah
We have no protocol for handling chemical accidents, managing medical
relief or fixing the liability of polluters
Sunita Narain / New Delhi December 04, 2009, 0:50 IST
It’s been 25 years since the night when chemicals spewed out of the
Union Carbide factory in Bhopal to kill and maim thousands over
generations. The question is if we have learnt from the disaster —
learnt how to handle a chemical accident; to dispose of industrial
toxic waste; to manage crucial medical relief, to give monetary
compensation speedily and to establish the liability of polluters — so
that accidents like this do not happen again.
I was in Bhopal this week as the city observed the anniversary of that
night. An exhibition put up by Bhopal activists made spectators relive
that night of horror: How people just fell to the ground like flies,
instantly dead as the gas-ridden air hit them; how the carcasses of
thousands of animals lay rotting on the roads and how hospitals could
not cope with the victims, and how they (particularly the company)
refused to explain the ailment or offered treatment. What is worse is
that even today parts of the city still live in horror. Activists say
that the next generation, children born after the disaster to parents
of gas victims, is unusually deformed and diseased. Worse still, a
stockpile of toxic chemicals remains in the factory — leaching and
contaminating groundwater of the new and old victims of this
industrial disaster.
The question is why this continues to happen. The fact is we refuse to
use credible public science to guide policy. After the disaster, the
Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) was asked to study the short-
term and long-term medical implications of the chemicals. But in the
early 1990s, the government asked the institution to discontinue the
research, without assigning any reason. As a result, there is no
epidemiological research on the victims, old and new. Civil society
groups working with victims have published studies on the increased
incidence of mental and physical deformities among the gas-affected
population. But as there is no empirical research by government
institutions, the government can deny the problem exists. It is
poverty they say, nothing unusual, criminal and irresponsible.
We stumbled on this denial game on another connected issue — the
disposal of waste in the Union Carbide factory compound. For some
years now, groups working in Bhopal have raised concern that toxic
contaminants remain in the factory. A case has been filed in the
Jabalpur bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court to direct the
government to remove the waste and remove it quickly. For the past two
years or so, the central and state government’s have been dealing
rather unsuccessfully with the question of how to dispose of the waste
— will it be sent to landfill sites, or will it be incinerated? But
even as it grapples with these questions, the stockpile of some 340
tonnes of stored waste sits on the abandoned factory. And the
government decides to change tack.
It now says the waste is not toxic and that groundwater around the
factory is not contaminated. Why? Because its scientific institutions
say so. My colleagues at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE)
decided to investigate.
They did the following: They first investigated what the factory was
manufacturing and what were the processes that it used. This gave them
clues into what should be checked in the laboratory. Piecing together
scanty information, they learnt that Union Carbide manufactured three
kinds of pesticides — carbaryl (trade name Sevin); aldicarb (Temik)
and a formulation of carbaryl and gamma-hexachlorocyclohexane (g-HCH),
sold under the trade name Sevidol. The company bought technical grade
HCH and after extraction of g-HCH, threw the waste with remaining
isomers and lasting toxicity into the ground. They also looked at the
derivatives of the chemicals; the solvents used by the company like
chlorinated benzene and heavy metals like mercury used as sealants in
the company.
With this information, we asked for permission to collect samples. We
got it readily from the Union Minister for Environment and Forests and
officials of the pollution control board accompanied my colleagues to
the factory. Chandra Bhushan, who directed this research, says that he
was shocked to see traces of mercury visible in parts of the factory.
He then went to different sites around the factory, collecting
groundwater sample: To know if the pollution had spread.
The results were startling. We found the same chemicals in the soil
and water of the factory, at unacceptably high levels; we found the
same in groundwater almost 3 km from the city, though at lower levels
but signifying chronic toxicity, long-term exposure to which can lead
to deadly diseases, particularly in an already immuno-suppressed poor
population of gas victims. Also, the task of remediation is massive —
not just the stored waste but the soil and water will also need to be
cleaned.
But science is malleable. Studies used by the state government to say
that there was no or negligible danger, only discussed acute toxicity
— the amount a human being would need to consume to die. Then, the
studies, which showed no contamination of groundwater, did not even
check for the pesticides being produced by the factory. They did not
find any, because they did not check for what needed to be found.
Confusion and denial are the names of the game. The victims will be
forgotten till the next anniversary comes along.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/sunita-narain-not-learningbhopal/378491/
chhotemianinshallah
TNN 6 December 2009, 01:56am IST
NEW DELHI: The Centre has turned down Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan’s
suggestion for an independent probe by the government into allegations
against Karnataka chief justice P D Dinakaran, virtually ending the
judge’s prospects of being elevated to the Supreme Court.
The Centre indicated what its views on Dinakaran were by simply
pointing out that it was not for the government to initiate an
inquiry.
The letter from the CJI to law minister M Veerappa Moily a fortnight
ago had put the government in a dilemma as to whether they should
proceed as per the CJI’s request. but after looking into the
memorandum of procedure (MoP) for the appointment of judges for the
higher judiciary, government wrote back to the CJI saying the MoP did
not provide for such an inquiry by the executive.
With so much of muck already in the public domain —the collector’s
report on alleged encroachment of 197 acres of land, Justice
Dinakaran’s stout denial of the allegations and fresh list of charges
by members of bar against him — the government was disinclined to
volunteer to waddle into the muddy waters. What independent inquiry
could be conducted into the charges at this stage and would it be
possible to do so without questioning the chief justice of Karnataka
HC — were the questions that weighed with Moily as he politely
declined CJI’s request.
With both the Collegium and government appearing to distance itself
from the proposal for elevation of Justice Dinakaran to the Supreme
Court, it appears that curtains are down for the Karntaka chief
Justice and there would be mounting pressure on the judiciary to
quickly evolve a strategy to deal with an emerging ugly situation. By
citing the MoP and putting the ball back in the Collegium’s court, law
minister Veerappa Moily has shown that he was careful and
circumspect.
Moily did not want to do anything contrary to the two judgments of the
SC or memorandum of procedure relating to appointment of judges to the
HCs and the SC. But, at the same time he did not want to be seen as
being directly instrumental in rejecting Justice Dinakaran’s name for
SC.
The CJI had earlier conveyed that as the Collegium had no mechanism to
inquire into the allegations levelled by lawyers against Justice
Dinakaran, it would be for the government to conduct an inquiry and
take a decision on the basis of the outcome of the probe.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Wont-probe-Dinakaran-Govt/articleshow/5306354.cms
chhotemianinshallah
TNN 6 December 2009, 01:58am IST
NEW DELHI: Seeking to de-escalate the tension between the Central
Information Commission and the Supreme Court, former chief information
commissioner Wajahat Habibullah on Saturday said there was no turf war
between the two institutions.
Habibullah was reacting to questions regarding the recent SC order
ordering a stay on CIC judgment that allowed for information
disclosure on judges’ appointments. ‘‘The Supreme Court is supreme and
its decision overrides everything,” he said.
“It is not fair to say that judiciary is not very forthcoming. There
will be areas where limits of the act will be put to test. I don’t
think judiciary is holding back,’’ Habibullah said.
When suggested that his stand was ‘‘too kind’’ to the judiciary
Habibullah said, ‘‘I’m not being too kind. There is no purpose in
seeking a confrontation. There is no turf war. My job is to determine
the act as it is so that every citizen can enjoy his right. People
feel that I take the soft line but I feel that the soft line works.’’
Speaking at an interaction at the Indian Women’s Press Corps,
Habibullah who resigned in October to take over as J&K state
information commissioner, said, that he was not in favour of amending
the RTI act at this stage. ‘‘The country will not stand for dilution
of the RTI act,’’ he said remarking that if at all the Act had to be
‘strengthened’ through amendments, it should be done under ‘‘public
scrutiny’’ as many people were under the apprehension that the
legislation will be compromised by the government.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/CIC-plays-down-rift-with-SC/articleshow/5306356.cms
chhotemianinshallah
M J Akbar Sunday December 06, 2009, 01:01 AM
Every anniversary of a trauma, whether Bhopal, Bhagalpur, Bluestar,
Ahmedabad or the anti-Sikh riots on Delhi's streets, turns into a
struggle between anger and amnesia. It is a no-contest. Amnesia wins
every time.
Eyeless in Bhopal. Heartless in communal riots. Clueless in Ayodhya.
Mindless in government. And, maybe, pointless in rage. Perhaps the
determining fact is that everyone, apart from the victim, has a vested
interest in silence since the guilt, active or passive, extends beyond
the obviously culpable. Governments might inspire and abet riots, but
they are never possible without participation of the people. Every
political party has an inconvenient truth in its history.
What, however, explains the callous indifference to the perpetrators
of the Bhopal tragedy, Union Carbide and Dow Chemical? Twenty-five
years ago, Union Carbide's factory in Bhopal spat out 40 tons of
aerial poison in the form of methyl isocyanate, killing nearly 4,000
immediately and some 15,000 since then. It was a crime of greed, since
this gas was used because it was cheaper than safer alternatives. The
cover-up was dubious, at the very least. Carbide attributed the
accident to sabotage by a disgruntled employee who was never named.
This evasion was prelude to escape. In 2001, Dow Chemical bought
Carbide for $11.6 billion.
Dow priced the Indian dead at an average of $2,200 per corpse, or
around Rs 1 lakh at today's exchange rates. The blinded and maimed
were dismissed with a compensation of $550 on average. That, explained
a Dow spokeswoman, was "plenty good for an Indian". When Dow Chemical
sets the price for Indian lives, we natives had better accept with
folded hands. How much, incidentally, do you think your infant's eyes
are worth? Raghu Rai, who gave the world the iconic image of Bhopal,
of a dead child's face, could have provided the answer, but which
establishment, political or corporate, has time for a photographer's
pain?
Our governments, whether led by Congress or BJP, made the usual
thundery noise in public and, in private, cooperated with Carbide/Dow
Jones, starting from the day Carbide chief Warren Anderson was
airlifted out of Bhopal to escape local wrath. Over time, even the
noise has become a passing perfunctory statement. We have never asked
for Anderson's extradition, although there is an international arrest
warrant against him. Is Anderson hiding in the Amazon forest? No. He
is living in a luxurious American suburb. Why should American
authorities worry about accountability if we don't? Our unstated
reason has been that action against Anderson would frighten foreign
investors. Why let a few thousand corpses interfere with the balance
sheet?
In 2006, Dow wrote to America's then ambassador in India, thanking him
for obtaining our government's assurance that Dow would not be held
liable for the mass murder of Bhopalis. Dow should now send a letter
to our present minister of state for environment, who went to Bhopal
to jeer at those who are still protesting against continuing death
from left-over toxic waste. According to critics, from 15 to 30 people
are still dying every month.
Dow Chemicals dare not be as casual about Americans. In 2002, it set
aside over two billion dollars to cover Carbide's asbestos
contamination liabilities. An American cough is far, far more
expensive than an Indian life. Why? Because America cares for
Americans. The poor in America have won their right to justice, and
every company knows that it cannot sweet-talk its way through
sleepwalkers in power.
If there is any explanation for Delhi's fudge-and-fuss approach, it
can only lie in the Indian elite's very real indifference to the poor.
What, one wonders, would have been the reaction if Carbide had leaked
its poison over Lutyens' Delhi rather than five kilometers from the
old Bhopal city? Would Anderson have spent 25 years in Tihar rather
than a villa in Hampton's? You can bet your last silver dollar that
Dow would have been both poorer and more contrite.
Abdul Jabbar Khan, convenor of the Bhopal Gas Peedith Mahila Udyog
Sangathan, had much to say to the media as he led a rally from the
homes of the dead to the death factory on the 25th anniversary. One
sentence said as much as was needed: "We got no justice, no adequate
compensation and not enough compassion." He was expecting justice from
a meandering legal system, compensation from a caustic foreign company
- and compassion from fellow-Indians. Of the three, the last hurts
most.
Media has done what it could. The Times of India has done some moving
reportage of the 25th anniversary in the last few days. It would be
interesting to find out, possibly through market research, whether the
readers of the nation's most powerful newspaper have been moved at
all.
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/TheSiegeWithin/entry/bhopal-25-years-of-sheer
chhotemianinshallah
Jug Suraiya Saturday December 05, 2009, 11:30 AM
What do the Bhopal gas tragedy - one of the worst industrial disasters
in this country - and secret Swiss bank accounts and foreign tax
havens - where Indians have reportedly stashed away an estimated US
$1.4 trillion of black money - have in common? Both represent
criminal acts of a horrendous scale, and those responsible for both
will never be brought to book.
On the same day that the media was awash with horror stories of how
the people of Bhopal, including unborn children, continue to suffer
the toxic effects of the deadly chemical leak 25 years after the
event, the TOI carried a report that India was fifth on the list of
160 countries which had illegal funds parked abroad. In India's case,
the total was said to be a staggering $1.4 trillion, a sum which if
recovered would many times over wipe out the country's internal and
external debt. Overnight, India would stop being a poor country, as
if a fairy godmother had waved a magic wand.
But - despite promises recently made by the G20 in Paris that by March
2010, Switzerland and other havens for undeclared cash would be
forced by threat of international sanctions to disgorge all this
illegal wealth - this isn't likely to happen. The reason? The same
reason that those responsible for the Bhopal gas leak - Union Carbide
and its then CEO Warren Anderson, who was allowed to illegally leave
this country so that he did not have to face court charges - have not
been brought to book, and probably never will.
According to the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan, the victims
of the tragedy - which continues to unfold relentlessly 25 years later
- received a flat sum of a mere Rs 25,000 by way of compensation,
compared to the Uphar cinema fire in Delhi whose victims received Rs
18 lakhs each.
Who is covering up for Union Carbide, and its parent company Dow
Chemicals? Who is pushing the toxic dirt of Bhopal under the carpet of
public consciousness and legal recourse? It's not the media, because
the media keep talking about Bhopal - as they do about Swiss bank
accounts and black money.
The Rs 4,000-crore Koda scam -- involving illegal mining, among other
things -- might hold a clue. It is only those who wield political
power in this country who can - and do - for a price cover up criminal
activities and ensure that their perpetrators get off scot-free.
Koda of course has been jailed for the scam that bears his name. But
going by experience - remember Sukh Ram, and all the other scamsters
against whom charges were brought but who walked free? -- he's
unlikely to be in jail for long. And it's unlikely that the money
will ever be recovered.
There is a clear link between the covering up of illegal acts and
money stashed away abroad. Remember Bofors, a case which still has
to be closed?
Bofors, Bhopal, Swiss accounts. There is a nexus linking all three,
and similar instances of wrongdoing that has gone unpunished thanks to
political connections who in turn have been rewarded for their help in
cash, preferably stashed on foreign shores.
Such collusion is not restricted to any one political party, but
extends to all. Criminal acts - and the cover-up of such acts, which
compounds the original crime - have the clandestine blessings of our
rulers, who profit from them. That's why Bhopal will never get
justice. Nor will loot buried abroad come to light. Our rulers - who
have too much to lose were such things to happen - will see to it.
So is it safe to lay the blame for Bhopal and Swiss bank accounts on
our netas? Yes, it is. Except for one inconvenient point. In a
democracy - which is what we are supposed to be - the electorate -
that's we -gets the governments it deserves.
So, in the end, are we - all of us - to be held guilty for Bhopal and
for the hoard of black money hidden abroad? Ask yourself that. Even
though the answer might be difficult to swallow.
Jugular Vein
Second Opinion
Comments(13)
do we deserve this says:
December 05,2009 at 12:02 PM IST
Aptly said we get the govt we deserve, but do we deserve the media we
are getting? Media is expected to provide effective checks and
balances over the very "powers that be" that you have
brought out, why is it acting as a counduit for PR for the highest
bidder/powers that be in the establishment?
Agree (9)
Disagree (1)
Satbir Singh Bedi says:
December 05,2009 at 12:37 PM IST
Since all political parties are corrupt, there is no choice for the
electorate but to choose the lesser evil. The electorate has to choose
between the Devil and the Deep Sea. Bofors case related to the period
when Congress party was in power. Koda case relates to BJP also as
Koda initially was a member of RSS and BJP. So, where to go, whom to
vote for? It is a very ticklish question. Supposing in Delhi, I do not
vote for Congress or BJP, then my vote is going to go waste because
these are the two parties that have a following in Delhi. So, we
should bring about electoral reforms. For that we need to amend the
Constitution. However, for that to happen, both the Congress and BJP
must come together so that the requisite majority for amending the
Constitution is available in the Parliament. Moreover, according to
the Supreme Court, we cannot change the basic structure of our
Constituion. However, some electoral reforms are immediately required.
First is that no person with criminal or corruption case pending
against him, should be allowed to stand in any election. Second is
that people should have the power to recall their elected
representative if they find him failing in his duty as their
representative. Thirdly, the person standing for elections must belong
to the constituency from where he stands so that he could look after
the needs of the Constituency and finally, there should be no anti-
defection law so that an elected representative is free to vote
keeping in view the needs of his electorate.
Agree (6)
Disagree (2)
(Reply to Satbir Singh Bedi)- turbulence says:
December 05,2009 at 06:33 PM IST
Koda was an RSS member and then BJP member but when he formed the
government in the state, I think, it was with the support of UPA ie
Congress, Laloo Prasad Yadav was the UPA emissary during that time.
Agree (5)
Disagree (2)
Ashok Gupta says:
December 05,2009 at 12:38 PM IST
Netas having unaccounted money in Swiss Banks can be compared with the
Britishers who were looting this countriy's wealth for almost 200
years and were depositing in England. These Netas/ Bureacrates are
also looting the exchequer and putting this money in Swiss Banks.
These Netas/ Bureacrates should also be treated like Traitors/ anti-
nationalists and need to be treated accordingly under IPC.
Who will Bell the Cat, wait and watch.
Out of US $ 1.4 Trillion (as per the author, may be 40% of the money
is such that there is no claimant. The Cheaters who have deposited
this money might be dead by now with leaving no legal heir.
Rest Later.
Agree (7)
Disagree (1)
turbulence says:
December 05,2009 at 12:56 PM IST
Excellent stuff!
I have a question to Jug though. At the outset I wish to clarify that
I am no BJP supporter and neither that BJP is any saint.
Myquestion to JUG is: Why did he not use the word Congress Party even
once in the entire article?
Bhopal gas tragedy, Sukhram case, Bofors case, Koda are the instances
mentioned in the article but no where the word Congress is mentioned
although all the above scams are Congress Party scams.
When it comes to any other political party, a mere allegation is
enough for the media, electronic and press, to disparage the party and
humiliate the members of that party. They dont believe in waiting for
the law to take its own course then but become the judge themselves
and pass judgement from a so called high moral ground.
The questions raised in the article are worthy of praise but the
collective blame put on all of us , as you mentioned, is a bit
difficult to swallow. The blame squarely lies with the Congress party
alone and I dont want to be seen standing next to them.
Agree (6)
Disagree (1)
Sharda Bhargav - The Confiscated Soul says:
December 05,2009 at 12:57 PM IST
Vivid account of pathetic Indian scene.
Around elections many leaders and gurus, eg Sh Advani ji - Baba Sh
Ramdev ji, announced vehemently that they would force the government
to get back our national dharohar $ 1.4 trillion said to be stashed in
foreign banks. Now this issue has silenced itself.
Advocates get filed PILs in important cases, they are urged to do
something here to strengthen the media efforts.
You have partially incompleted the sentence, to say that we get the
government we deserve. In addition we get impure bureaucrats,
inactionable police, long outstanding cases dealing law men, swab
changing medicos, building collapsing engineers, lethargic
administraitors, IEDs exploding naxals, exploiting businessmen, tax
collecting people tough on employees and soft on others, are some of
the nation building pillars we really really deserve.
So the answer is simple and we electorate have been swallowing it for
decades.
May be next generation does not face poverty, corruption and
overcrowding.
Agree (8)
Disagree (1)
premji jairam babaria says:
December 05,2009 at 01:19 PM IST
So in the end ,we are to blame because we elect the
leaders,politicians who continue to loot the country under various
international deals,local projects,by misusing political powers
enjoyed by them.This argument seems to be not justified in the context
that large masses ,80% of the total population of India are
politically ignorant and they are being manuplated by 5% of the total
population of India who are at the helm of the political power.They
are monopolists,industrialists,elite class and political honchos who
are having control over entire economy of india directly or indirectly
continue to exert their influences through purchase of media and
propaganda machinery not only that they also engage on large scale
their stooges who work at mass level and micro level by manuplating
the poor people who follow sheepishly them at the time of elections
and vote as they are fed by these people.This can be halted only when
80% of population is awakened politically as it happened in Western
countries ,then in India there will be democracy by the people,for the
people and of the people.
Agree (5)
Disagree (1)
Arush Jain says:
December 05,2009 at 02:15 PM IST
u mean to point out that 'we' are to blame as we select the leaders
who commit such crimes but what other options we have. the probable
answer is to join politics and be selfless which is a rarity these
days. we blame the system but we ARE the system. rather our own
'greed' is the system. These things happen elsewhere as well.
A Few good men are 'few' !!!
and as the great siad :
"see inside there is nothing to hide turn and face the
light"-floyd.
Agree (2)
Disagree (1)
AMAN SNH says:
December 05,2009 at 05:22 PM IST
Imagine what would have happened had this tragedy taken place in a
Western country, for example USA or UK. Responsibility for the
accident would have been fixed and those responsible would have been
severely punished. Union Carbide and its parent company would have
been bankrupted by the punitive damages they would have had to pay.
Alas, lives from a third-world country are quite dispensable in the
eyes of both corporates and governments, and all the victims live a
fate worse than death: hope in a lost cause.
Agree (2)
Disagree (1)
S C Vaid says:
December 05,2009 at 05:48 PM IST
Hope it hammers the right thinking minds to initiate the necessary
political reforms, as well as adminitrative and economic reforms.
True, not only we get the government we deserve but also we get the
opposition we deserve.
Independents find themselves where they deserve. An eye opener.
Agree (3)
Disagree (1)
ssmoorthy says:
December 05,2009 at 06:13 PM IST
Mr.Jug Suraiya has written about the Swiss accounts of political
leaders.That is the problem with compromised democracy.A true
democracy should be the government of laws to protect the
people.Unfortunately law breaking is the rule rather than an exception
in India.The supreme court justices should be appointed from the best
legal minds of the country for life time and they should uphold the
laws of the land.The politicians come and go and ofcourse the human
beings.For any political systems the leadership is critical.In our
history only few kings were mentioned,Ashoka,Chandra Guptas and
Akbar.The others were just kings not great kings.In Puranas and
Scriptures of India Rama was a perfect human being and Krishna the the
greatest political and philosophiocal figure.Mr.Gandhi was a great
human being. Can we come across among the present day leaders a
perfect or great human being?Only the media have the power to expose
the worst of the human nature.
Agree (2)
Disagree (1)
Rajeev.B.G says:
December 05,2009 at 06:44 PM IST
Jug saab,
Lot of critics appreciated the role of Joker in Batman - The Dark
Knight Movie,even though he is a villain, better than that of the
batman himself, you knw why? Coz he sticks to his philosophy, all the
time ..Similarly, We would appreciate if you donot confuse us, the
readers , by constantly switching your philosophical inclinations.
Once you are a big fan of capitalism and you defend your yellow type
and Page 3 journalism, ruthlessly, in your blogs and make quotes like;
"In a democracy, people get the government they deserve" and
say that it aint worth to report burning Social issues.Suddenly you
feel responsible and write blogs like this, which refutes your earlier
theories..sir, don't you feel that being in a responisible position
like yours, and in a website which is the most viewed in the journo
world, it is nt ethical for you to give mixed signals to your faithful
readers?
P.S: If this is a capitalist conspiracy to keep ppl confused , then
please pardon me...
Agree (2)
Disagree (2)
Devayani Rentala says:
December 05,2009 at 07:26 PM IST
This rant aagainst widespread corruption in India is a bit over the
top.No doubt the Bhopal tragedy is horrendous by any standard,But to
mix it up with Swiss bank accounts and the Khoda crores is like
comparing apples and oranges.The fundamental problem with India is it
has been steeped in casual corruption for hundreds of years
irrespective of class.Today,it is naturally one of the most corrupt
countries in the world while Barack Obama unduly blames Hamid Karzai
for being inordinately corrupt.
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/jugglebandhi/entry/bhopal-tragedy-and-swiss-accounts
chhotemianinshallah
Agencies
Posted: Saturday , Dec 05, 2009 at 1726 hrs
Bangalore:
The Advocates Association of Bangalore (AAB) on Saturday said it
expects Karnataka High Court Chief Justice P D Dinakaran to
voluntarily quit following the Centre's refusal to elevate him to the
Supreme Court in the wake of land grabbing allegations against him.
In view of the government returning the Supreme Court collegium's
recommendation on Dinakaran, it was left to the discretion of senior
lawyers to demand his resignation or seek his impeachment by Lok
Sabha, AAB office bearers, including its president K N Puttegowda,
said in a statement.
"However, to uphold the dignity of the judiciary, we hope that Justice
Dinakaran will volunteer to resign his post," the statement said.
The AAB further said it would also oppose Dinakaran presiding over the
bench and threatened that in the event of his continuance rejecting
the plea of the association, it would convene a meeting of its general
body to decide the future course of action.
Last month, AAB had called for a day-long boycott of courts and the
protest turned violent in the high court, over which the court
launched contempt proceedings against AAB.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/lawyers-body-asks-dinakaran-to-voluntarily-quit/550394/
chhotemianinshallah
Agencies
Posted: Saturday , Dec 05, 2009 at 1229 hrs
New Delhi:
Ending weeks of uncertainty, Government has rejected the Supreme Court
collegium's move to elevate to the apex court Karnataka High Court
Chief Justice P D Dinakaran in the wake of allegations of land
grabbing against him and his family.
Sources in the Law Ministry said that the file recommending the
elevation has been returned to the Chief Justice of India K G
Balakrishnan with a request to the collegium to reconsider the
decision.
Balakrishnan had written to the Law Ministry seeking de-linking of the
name of Dinakaran from a list of High Court Chief Justices,
recommended for elevation to Supreme Court.
Sources claim that the Law Ministry's decision to return the file came
after it found that various probes including those conducted by the
Intelligence Bureau and District Collector of Tiruvallur were enough
to deny Dinakaran elevation to the Supreme Court.
Government felt that there was no need for any more probe into the
issue as requested by the Chief Justice.
A report by Survey of India is yet to be forwarded to the SC
Collegium, the sources said. Dinakaran is facing allegations of land
grabbing in Kaverirajapuram in Tiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu, a
charged denied by him.
It is learnt that the Prime Minister's Office had also referred to the
law ministry the media campaign on the issue.
Law Minister Veerappa Moily, when contacted for his comments on the
development, said, "I would not like to comment on an issue which
deals with the appointment of judges to the higher judiciary. It is
not appropriate (to say anything).”
The Law Ministry sent its report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who
is understood to have agreed with its perception and wanted the
collegium to reconsider its recommendation.
In August this year, the collegium had recommended the name of
Dinakaran along with Chief Justices of four other High Courts. While
Dinakaran's name was kept on hold while four others were elevated to
the Supreme Court recently.
Comments (4) |
The Congress believes in Corruption only as corrupts are appointed!
By: Chinmaya Naidu | 05-Dec-2009
All recommendations made by Balkrisnan CJ and his collegium members
should be rejected as they exfacie appear to be dubious,It very
strange that Balkrishnan and his collegues despite the adverse report
against Dinakarn have been insisting upon Dinakaraj's elevation as one
of their collegues!Just like Sonia's Govt the Balkrishnan's Cooleguim
wants another corrupt judge to be their collegue>Jai Ho Sonia and now
Jai Ho Balkrshnan and his collewguim members for making mockery of
Judiuciary,Will Pranab without losing his equilubriam answer this and
soi also Chidambaram!
Justice (Dinakaran) atlast !
By: Gopal | 05-Dec-2009
The Govt has done the right thing in rejecting the elevation of
Dinakaran to the highest court. The full credit for this restoration
of credibility of the selection process should go to the press which
brought out this issue and the people who (were deprived of their
lands)relentlessly fought this out. The shadow of doubt hangs around
the Govt of Tamiladu which should have mandated the Dist Collector
earlier (not when directed by the SC)to furnish the details of the
lands acquired by the judge. Now, Mr Dinakaran should desist from
attending to his duties till the landholding issue is resolved and his
asset holdings should be probed by a sitting judge of the Supreme
Court. If he is found guilty of land grabbing, he should be made to
face the law. At last a good job well done !
SC Collegeium's move to elevate HC Judge.
By: srinivas | 05-Dec-2009
SC move towards elevation of HC Judge is unbelievable. This time
Govt., has come to the rescue of safeguarding the sanctity of judicial
system. A layman's conscious pricks and why not by the learned
Collegeum ?. There are several instances where the Judge's themselves
honarably desist from presiding over the bench untill the charges
aired /levelled are cleared. I may safely conclude that Judicial
system at highest level also not firm in taking decision for their own
reasons allowing the matter to be dragged on for months-together.
Govt rejects SC ......
By: k p chandra | 05-Dec-2009
This is yet another example of lack of faith and transparency in our
system while dealing with an important matter like elevation of Judges
to the Supreme Court. While the CJI and his Collegeum should
understand that people who are being recommended by the SC Collegeum
for elevation to the Apex Court must not only be clean, but should
also appear to be clean and no iota of doubt should remain in such
matters. It is always better not to elevate a Judge against whom
charges are levelled than elevating him and then diluting the entire
system. At the most, a case of injustice to an individual may be
there, but the whole system will appear credible.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/govt-rejects-sc-collegiums-move-to-elevate-dinakaran/550349/0
bademiyansubhanallah
gas tragedy, should the Madhya Pradesh government disburse the money
to victims?
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 18:17 IST
Today is the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas leak, which has
claimed 15,274 lives and affected 5,74,000 people since December 2,
1984, when deadly methyl iso cyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide
factory.
NGOs fighting for the cause of the victims have accused the Centre and
the Madhya Pradesh government of a lack of initiative in extraditing
former Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson from the US. The NGOs
also allege that huge volumes of lethal toxic waste are still lying in
the factory premises.
According to an agreement facilitated by the supreme court, dated
February 15, 1989, Union Carbide Corporation, US, provided a
compensation of $470 million (Rs715 crore) meant for 1,02,000 affected
people and 3,000 people who lost their lives due to the toxic gas
emission. However, the same amount (Rs715 crore) was distributed among
5,79,274 people, as the number of victims went up by more than 500%. A
flat amount of Rs25,000 each was given to affected people, while Rs1
lakh was provided per person for death from 1992 to 2004.
Now, Bhopal gas tragedy relief and rehabilitation minister Babulal
Gaur has sought Rs116 crore from the Centre to build " a memorial of
international standard - akin to the one in Hiroshima, Japan -
depicting a detailed account of the world's worst industrial
disaster".
Instead of building a Rs116-crore memorial on the site of the Bhopal
gas tragedy, should the Madhya Pradesh government disburse the money
to victims?
chhotemianinshallah
5 Dec 2009, 0256 hrs IST, Kaveri Rajaraman,
The Bhopal gas disaster made headlines 25 years ago as the world’s
largest chemical disaster, a deadly leak of methyl isocyanate (MIC)
gas from a Union Carbide pesticide plant injuring half a million
people, killing 22,000, disabling another 1,50,000. Subsequently, it
was largely remembered as a tragic, but isolated event.
But disasters proliferate. They reproduce. Every famous disaster has
its less-famous parents, it has offspring that are yet to hit the big
time.
Three years before the great gas leak, on December 25, 1981, the same
chemical plant in Bhopal leaked enough phosgene to kill one worker at
the plant and grievously injure two. A month later, on January 9,
1982, a second leak put 25 more workers in hospital. But worker deaths
are never taken seriously. On October 5, 1982, the immediate parent of
the big gas disaster manifested itself as a leak that released enough
MIC, hydrochloric acid and chloroform to hospitalise many members of
nearby residential communities.
Union Carbide’s response to these disasters was to fire workers who
highlighted this issue, ignore the finding of 61 safety hazards by its
own internal safety audit team, and rewrite its safety manuals to
permit more lax standards.
Union Carbide’s documents demonstrate that the company designed the
plant with ‘untested’ technology and compromised safety in order to
save up to $8 million. While comparable factories in Europe were
equipped with automatic safety devices and computerised early warning
systems, the plant in Bhopal relied on manual detection and had no
emergency planning measures in place. When Union Carbide’s cost-
cutting led to its laying off more than half its staff and drastically
reducing the duration of safety training, that element of manual
oversight was dangerously weakened.
In addition, Union Carbide was saving on the costs of refrigerating
the tanks, a necessary measure to contain this highly volatile liquid.
Finally, one night, a leaky pressure valve enabled a deadly reaction
between water and MIC, whose toxic gas products burst through the
undersized tanks and on to half a million residents of Bhopal. None of
the six safety systems that could have prevented a leak were
functional that night, and the factory’s alarm had been turned off.
The history of the Bhopal gas disaster is a shocking reminder of the
human and monetary costs of corporate strategies of maximising short-
term profits.
The overnight toll was estimated to be 8,000-15,000 deaths. It is
estimated that exposure to the gas on that deadly night kills a person
every day in Bhopal even these days, 25 years later, and that at least
50,000 people are still too disabled to earn a living. People have
suffered from chronic respiratory, digestive and circulatory ailments
over the years. The community has an extremely elevated rate of
cancers, menstrual disorders and birth defects. The Journal of the
American Medical Association recently reported the effects of toxins
on the children of those exposed to the gas, including being born with
fused fingers, splayed limbs, spina bifida, respiratory weakness, skin
disorders and a dizzying array of symptoms of mental damage.
After an initial claim that the gas leaked was merely tear gas, Union
Carbide changed its stance and refused to reveal information on the
composition of the leaked gas to avoid associated liabilities, making
treatment of victims tricky and hazardous. More unfortunately, a
doctor employed by Union Carbide recommended a treatment that had been
proven effective in double blind clinical trials, only to withdraw
that recommendation in the presence of Union Carbide’s lawyers, upon
which widespread use of that treatment ceased.
Meanwhile, the Bhopal gas disaster gave birth to a Bhopal water
disaster. Union Carbide turned tail and abandoned the factory after
the accident, leaving behind tonnes of toxic material held within the
factory that added to the deadly chemicals it had already been dumped
into the soil in and around the factory. Assorted poisons and heavy
metals were found in samples of soil and water.
Legally speaking, Union Carbide’s strategy has been to dodge all
liability and claim that an unnamed saboteur played mischief in the
factory. Although the Indian government settled its civil suit against
the company, Union Carbide and its CEO at the time of the disaster,
Warren Anderson, are to this day considered absconders from justice by
the government for ignoring court summons and refusing to face
criminal charges of culpable homicide.
In 2001, Dow Chemical acquired Union Carbide. While it set aside $2.2
billion for Union Carbide’s liabilities for asbestos exposure in the
US, it refused to even acknowledge its liabilities in Bhopal. A denial
of its liabilities goes against Indian, US and international corporate
laws. The monetary and logistical responsibility for a full clean up
of the factory site, just compensation and medical monitoring for the
survivors of all of Union Carbide’s toxic waste, as well as legal
responsibility in the criminal case in India now lies with Dow
Chemical.
(The author has just obtained a doctoral degree from Harvard
University in computational neuroscience)
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/5302645.cms?flstry=1
chhotemianinshallah
Agencies
Posted: Sunday , Dec 06, 2009 at 1510 hrs
New Delhi:
Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court P D Dinakaran, whose proposed
elevation as the judge of the Supreme Court has been on hold, on
Sunday questioned the motive behind the campaign against him and said
he will come out with "clean hands".
The judge, who has been at the centre of a controversy over alleged
land-grabbing, said his delicate position as Chief Justice has forced
him to observe self-restraint to "counter and expose" the people
behind the campaign which ultimately would not succeed and "truth will
prevail".
"It is not for me to prove my innocence. A day would come when people
would realise that I am a person with clean hands and heart. I will
come out of this with clean hands," Dinakaran said.
Comments (8) |
evidence speaks for itself
By: P.V. Nayagam | 07-Dec-2009
"It is not for me to prove my innocence. A day would come when people
would realise that I am a person with clean hands and heart. I will
come out of this with clean hands," Dinakaran said." Sir, I am no
judge, but I do know that there is irrefutable evidence of your
criminal wrongdoing with Public Interest GRoups. Apparently, you are
beyond being shamed into accepting your mistakes and resigning if you
really do have a clean heart.
Justice Dinakaran must choose the honourable way out
By: RJ Khurana | 06-Dec-2009
Justice Dinakaran's episode is becoming curiousor by the day. Lately,
he has been swearing too much for comfort. Why will eminent jurists of
the country go after him in the manner they have done? They don't seem
to have done it out of some animus against him. On the face of it,
they do not seem to gain anything from maligning him. The most
honourable thing for him will be to resign and then sue the jurists
spearheading the campaign against him if he is convinced that he is
unfairly being criticized. He is a man of law and should know what is
what. As the things stand today, the Supreme Court may seriously
consider whether judiciary will be well-served if he continues as
Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court? Will his continuance in the
midst of raging controversy about his integrity not undermine the
confidence of the people in the judiciary?
Justice Dinakaran's plea of innocence
By: RJ Khurana | 06-Dec-2009
Justice Dinakaran is swearing too much for comfort. Why will eminent
jurists go after him in the manner they have done? They don't seem to
have done it out of some animus against justice Dinakaran. They do not
seem to gain anything from maligning him. The most honourable thing
for him will be to resign and then sue the jurists spearheading the
campaign against him if he is convined that he is unfarly being
criticized. He is a man of law and knows what is what.
I will come out with clean hands': Justice Dinakaran
By: N. Sridharan | 06-Dec-2009
Dinakaran is so confident of his innocence and coming out with clean
hands. Unless proved guilty the accused is innocent. How very
convenient!! He seems to have completed the process of covering up the
tracks of his misdeeds. He has been in the legal profession for long
and has been a judge too. He knows that favourable judgements can be
bought if you have the resources and know the ropes.
motive
By: Das | 06-Dec-2009
It is very clear that Justice Dinakaran is targeted just because he is
a dalit.. As he said, the motive of people behind the campaign needs
to be exposed.
Please stop
By: BP | 07-Dec-2009
Please stop playing the caste card. People like you are bent on
keeping the society divided for ever.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/i-will-come-out-with-clean-hands-justice-dinakaran/550591/
bademiyansubhanallah
Priyadarshi Siddhanta
Posted: Monday , Dec 07, 2009 at 0922 hrs
New Delhi:
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will probe alleged illegal
mining in the three-mineral rich states of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and
Karnataka. The government gave the go-ahead for the probe on November
30.
Senior officials told The Indian Express that the Centre is now
setting up a Joint Task Force comprising officers from the Indian
Bureau of Mines, domestic financial institutions and the Customs
Department to carry out a wide-ranging probe.
“The task force will focus on Andhra Pradesh to begin with, but it
will be free to visit any place to gather information,” said an
official.
The Andhra government recently asked the Centre to order a CBI probe
into the alleged illegal mining in the state, including the activities
of the Obulapuram Mining Company (OMC) promoted by Karnataka Tourism
Minister G Janardhana Reddy.
OMC is accused of allegedly changing mining lease boundary markings
between Andhra and Karnataka. On the advice of the Central Empowered
Committee of the Supreme Court, the Andhra government recently
suspended mining operations in six mines, five of which reportedly
belong to OMC.
Meanwhile, the Mines Ministry has written to the Union Home Ministry
asking for the inclusion of mining in the list of activities under the
purview of the National Investigation Agency (NIA). “This indicates
our determination to go far into the issue,” a Mines official said.
The Ministry has also endorsed the demand of mineral-rich states that
central paramilitary forces be pressed into service against illegal
mining.
However, iron ore-rich states like Karnataka are not keen to seek the
Ministry’s help in ordering a CBI probe. The B S Yeddyurappa
government in Karnataka has been soft-pedalling the issue, and last
week turned down Mines Minister B K Handique’s offer for a CBI probe.
The issue has rocked Andhra Pradesh and Orissa, with the Opposition
seeking to corner the governments on the issue. The winter session of
the Andhra Pradesh Assembly, scheduled to begin tomorrow, is likely to
witness heated discussions.
The Central Empowered Committee has indicted the Andhra government for
doing little to prevent illegal mining, and recommended that all
mining activity in the region be suspended until boundaries of the
mining leases are determined and fixed by an independent agency in a
time-bound manner.
Acting on the directives of the Karnataka High Court, the Indian
Bureau of Mines has already begun surveying and demarcating boundaries
in the area in coordination with the Karnataka and Andhra governments.
The Bellary region alone has an estimated 12,000 “float iron ore”
mines, at which workers dig by hand for small quantities of iron ore
that “float” near the surface — in complete violation of environmental
and mining norms.
Comments (3) |
Chandrababu Naidu and His role in the state.
By: Goutamikrishna | 07-Dec-2009
It is very nice and I congratulate Mr. Chandrababu Naidu for
galvanizing the voice against, and get the CBI probe in to, the mining
irregularities. It is enough. Now he has a big job in the state being
a highly responsible person. The state and the government are
crippling with the T-agitation in the light of on going KCR fast unto
death. Let us not go into the debate. Being an ex CM and in the light
of the demise of the strongest person of the government YSR, he should
play a constructive role and try to get solution to the issue
amicably. Now more than political it is taking regional lines, being a
responsible person he has to help with all restraints to resolve the
issue. This only will elate his stature in the people of the state. He
should not make a turmoil situation in the assembly and try to corner
Mr. Rosaiah personally, who is stuck up on this issue as everybody
knows its complexity. His wisdom and responsible cooperation are
highly important on this issue at this stage. HOPE
CBI Probe into illegal mining
By: VEDANTAM SRIPATISARMA | 07-Dec-2009
Illegal mining is also related to subvertive definitions of the
catchment areas which is revealed while flash floods occur (the recent
one in Andhra is one glaring example).Any organisation probing one
issue should include other departments like Irrigation and Engineering
as well
ILLEGAL MINING PROBE
By: EssEss | 07-Dec-2009
This is a welcome move only if the CBI will do the job in an unbiased
manner. However track record suggests that this will another of those
wasteful public expenditure where the CBI will server its political
master (currently Congress) to allow it to be used as a stick against
the Opposition. And after all the investigations are completed illegal
activities will continue to flourish under the blessings of the
political parties! What a sham!! If the Govt is serious the concerned
parties must be arrested without warrant pending decision by a
'people's' court headed by ordinary folks!!
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/cbi-to-probe-illegal-mining/550850/
chhotemianinshallah
The Indian Express
Mon, Dec 7 05:28 AM
Reports suggest that the law ministry has asked the Supreme Court
collegium to reconsider its recommendation to elevate Karnataka High
Court Chief Justice P.D. Dinakaran to the country's highest
adjudicatory body. The law ministry move follows much uncertainty over
the fate of Justice Dinakaran, given that a report by the collector of
the district in which the judge is alleged to have grabbed land is
believed to be adverse and that his proposed elevation has invited
caution by senior jurists. This is not the first time that the Supreme
Court collegium has been requested to reconsider its recommendation.
For instance, in November 2008, the prime minister's office reportedly
objected to three recommended judges — Justices H.L. Dattu, A.K.
Ganguly and R.M. Lodha — since they were not the seniormost. But the
collegium stuck by its recommendation, and as convention dictated, its
decision was heeded.
While it is unclear what the collegium's response will be, it is a
testament to the responsiveness of the system that many dissenting
voices have been given a considered hearing. Apart from eminent
jurists, former Chief Justice J.S. Verma argued in these pages that
even the hint of scandal was enough to decide against appointing a
judge to the Supreme Court; he, in fact, suggested the executive's
intervention. The law ministry, thus, has the opportunity to end this
sordid saga that, left unaddressed, could end up doing the reputation
of the apex court no good.
Whatever the conclusion may be in this case, the long-term questions
highlighted need to be urgently addressed. Ever since the Second
(1993) and Third (1998) Judges Cases, the five seniormost judges of
the Supreme Court self-appoint. Suggestions for a third party — either
an ombudsman or a government official — to also have a say in
appointments have so far not moved forward. Besides, the exercise in
appointing judges is shrouded in secrecy, as witnessed by the recent
Supreme Court decision to stay a Central Information Commission order
directing the release of documents concerning the appointments of
Justices Dattu, Ganguly and Lodha. Of course, any move to increase
transparency in appointments and expand the pool of decision-makers
must be done in a way that preserves the independence of the
judiciary. It is within this framework that the larger questions
thrown up by the Justice Dinakaran episode need to be addressed.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/48/20091207/1242/top-courting-resolutions.html
Sid Harth
Agencies
Posted: Saturday , Dec 12, 2009 at 1615 hrs
Bangalore:
'We cannot have a backlog for long periods of time... people will
revolt... system will crumble.
Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan warned on Saturday that long
periods of delay in disposing of cases would lead people to "revolt"
and the legal system to crumble, as he made a strong pitch for
doubling the number of subordinate courts to 35,000.
"We cannot have a backlog for long periods of time... people will
revolt... system will crumble," Balakrishnan said at a conference on
"Alternative Dispute Resolution- Conciliation and Mediation" in
Bangalore.
He expressed the view that though people have confidence in the
judiciary as they "feel they will get justice today or tomorrow or the
day after tomorrow, how long they can wait?"
"We cannot have this much of delay at any cost. It should be reduced,"
Justice Balakrishnan said. The CJI blamed fewer number of courts and a
significant number of vacancies of Judges as the reasons responsible
for pendency of large number of cases.
The number of courts in the country is not adequate at all, he argued.
While there are posts of 16,000 judges in subordinate courts, the
vacancies number 2,000.
He said the number of subordinate courts should be increased from the
present 16,000 to at least 35,000. "Under any circumstances, Indian
judiciary cannot work forward unless we have 35,000 subordinate courts
in India".
"State Governments are not coming forward with (establishing) large
number of courts," Balakrishnan said and regretted that there is no
progress on the move to set up 4,000 village courts. While India has
developed in "all other areas", courts are still taking "too much
time" in disposing of cases.
He stressed the role of mediation and conciliation in justice delivery
system. In China, only 20 per cent cases go for trial while 80 per
cent is settled though mediation and conciliation.
But in India, though statistics are not available, he believes not
more than five per cent of cases go for mediation. "We should
encourage litigants (to go in) for mediation," the CJI said.
He said litigation in India is "very inexpensive", and that's why
people are not going in for mediation. Justice Balakrishnan also had a
dig at lawyers, citing their role in delaying the cases.
9 Comments |
Address corruption in judiciary first
By: Rajesh | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 20:25:19 PM
There is no point in dumping in the corrupt system. CJI should first
address judicial corruption, then make case for more money.
Loudmouth CJ Balkishan
By: Salimkhan Mh. | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 19:53:22 PM
THIS PERSON HAS NO RIGHT TO TALK ABOUT DELAYS.WHAT STEPS DID HE TAKE
TO WITHDRAW THE RECMMONDATION ABOUT THE APPOINTMENT OF A CORRUPT JUDGE
IN DINAKARAN AND INSTEAD DRAG WITH OTHERS OF HIS COLLEGUES IN FRAY
WITH HIM!
Honesty and integrity is the urgent need to improve the performance
of Judiciary.
By: Saileswar Chakrabarti | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 19:03:38 PM
Sir, Our CJI's comments are absolutely correct in making this
observation as evident from daily backlog of long pending cases all
over the country. The solution should be explored from the suggestions
offered from different sources and proper implementation of well
accepted principles followed in Courts of advanced countries taking
care of honesty and integrity of the whole implementing machineries.
Delay in judiciary
By: MOHAN DADDIKAR | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 18:57:12 PM
People are moe interested to know as to what steps the Judges and
others in that profession have taken to expedite the delivery of
justice. Such warning of rebellion by the people has no meaning in
India as Indian can suffer any indignity for cnturies as obseerved in
their being slaves of foreigners. Infinite tolerance is the defect in
Indian character.
CJI playing containment strategy, not rejection of institutional
maladies !!
By: CK Raju Thrissur | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 18:14:19 PM
Has CJI ever explored what are the broad categories of injustice for
which redressals are sought ? Has CJI ever explored what could have
led to such large instances of injustice to occur in the first place ?
Then that is where Supreme Court's judges and CJI should be focussing
their efforts on. CJI, while saying that there should more forums of
hearings and more judgements is becoming part of the larger injustice,
by refusing to understand what causes them. Such statements are
definitely not expected from the highest office of the judiciary - in
fact, they point at the bigger malaise that has gripped judiciary -
which is that judges too have become part of the factors that cause
injustice in the first place; judges' activities and indulgences are
part of the crime and they escape public gaze because such
criminalities are accepted as part of the system of governance. How
else can one interpret investment portfolios of judiciary ? Terrible
shame, CJI, your institution has betrayed us.
CJI warns of people’s revolt against delayed justice system
By: Abdulmajeed Khan Advocate | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 17:52:48 PM
Dear Sir, if best legal persons will be elevated as High Court judges,
they should satisfy the test during their probation of two years, they
should on merits dispose of minimum 5000 cases. Only able lawyers,
efficient district judges will be able to pass this test, so the
people require such type of judges to be made available in the High
Courts. The Munsif having 10 years experience delivered judgments not
less than 5000 on merits in light of Apex court's judgments should be
promoted to sub judge and same period for sub judges requires for
promotion to District judge and same principle be followed for
district judge's elevation to High court judge. In the context of
order sheets of courts,this requires consideration. Meritorious
persons should be filled on the posts of judges, quality not quantity.
The judges making negligence in their decisions, ignoring Apex Courts
decision made available deserves some penlities for their acts.Further
no supreme court judge should retire till death
Justice delayed is justice denied.
By: muslimbhagawat | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 17:45:21 PM
Justice delayed is justice denied.when the judiciary is neglected by
the govt it should be tantamount to make the society revolutionary.the
govt of india has been neglecting justice although it is main pillar
of democracy.so we need to obey the orders of CJI.
delayed justice
By: S L Chowdhary | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 17:30:18 PM
Mr. CJI is right in saying that people will revolt if justice is not
done. But increasing no of courts is not going to solve the problem.
Main problem is accountability of judges. if we could ensure this, no
of judges can be reduced. A court takes 5 years to take cognisance.
Just because accused want time for arguments. After taking cognisance,
courts has taken more than 5 years to frame charges against the
accused. Because accused want time for arguments or puts up frivolous
applications and courts grants him repeatedly time for arguments. I am
now sure that this kind of justice is responsible for increase of
crime.
already revolted.
Sid Harth
Agencies
Posted: Saturday , Dec 12, 2009 at 1722 hrs
Mumbai: Related
The father of IIT alumnus Vikram Buddhi, who was awarded a nearly five-
year jail term by a US court for posting hate messages against former
President George W Bush, on Saturday sharply reacted to the verdict
saying the trial was unfair and a "total miscarriage of justice".
B K Subbarao, a lawyer and former Navy Captain, also said the 38-year-
old PhD student of Purdue University will appeal against the ruling.
"The sentence has come without a straight trial and without any valid
indictment because essential facts were not stated in the charges,"
Subbarao said, terming it a "total miscarriage of justice".
"As the indictment was invalid, he should not have been sentenced.
Buddhi, who is defending himself in US court, will now file an appeal
in the appellate court in Chicago."
Buddhi was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison and an
additional three years of supervised release by a US court for posting
hate messages in 2006 against Bush and calling for bombings of
American infrastructure.
Subbarao said the US criminal Procedure laws required essential facts
of the offence to be stated in the charges which was not done in his
son's case.
He said the first charge against Buddhi states "on or before December
30, 2005 Vikram Buddhi knowingly and willfully threatened to kill
George Bush in violation of section 871 of title 18 US code."
"But nowhere in this charge it was stated how he had threatened. The
essential fact was missing and the indictment was invalid. As such,
the trial was unfair and sentence should not have been pronounced,"
Subbarao said.
Subbarao said only during the trial the prosecution had brought before
the court the internet messages in question.
"The Supreme Court of the US has laid down that whenever essential
fact of the offence is not stated in the charges, no additional
document can be brought to support the indictment," he pointed out.
Therefore, in the opinion of US Supreme Court, the indictment must
stand or can fall on its own. In the case of Buddhi it fell because
the essential fact was missing in the charge, he claimed.
Subbarao hoped that Buddhi would get justice in the appellate court.
Comments |
traveller
By: citizen | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 20:59:06 PM
Mr.Vikram Buddhi on his own free will came to the United States
allegedly for education towards his PhD.The American conul based on
his application and credentials as presented provided him with a visa
for entering the States to study at the University.He is admitted
based to the United States as a guest extending him with all the
priveleges and rights with the condition to respect and obey the laws
of the land.This University provided education with financial
assistance to quite a few Indian students.His intentions of threating
the President of the United States in any form violated the laws and
his rights to be in the country was compromised.A country providing
religious freedom irrespective of race,nationality is America.His
religious jihad and ideologies got him to the jail. He is defending
himself in an American court?Another joke. Did anyone India care about
him? If they do,provide him with legal representation as a citizen of
India,so he will get his hearing if on appeal..
CHORI OUR SINAJORI
By: RAMESH PATEL | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 20:54:59 PM
TYPICAL INDIAN MANTALITY, AS A COUNTRY, AS PERSONS OF INDIA "CHORI OUR
SINAJORI" . YOU ARE NOT PUNISHED FOR NOT DOING ANYTHING? WHY DID YOU
DO WHATEVER YOU DID? SAMETHING FOR INDIA. iNDIA EXPLODED ATOM., TO TRY
TO SHOW SUPERMACY NEXT DAY PAKISTAN HAD TO DO IT TO NOTRALIZE IT.NOW
WE WANT NUCLEAR MATERIAL FOR SO CALLED PEACEFUL ENERGY PURPOSES. BUT,
BUT DO NOT WANT TO SIGH THE NPT TREATY, WHICH CLEARLY SHOW FISHY
MOTIVES, AND BLAMES US FOR NOT GIVING IT. AGAIN " CHORI OUR SINAJORI".
Dr.
By: Raj | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 18:31:27 PM
Bring him back home! Who the hell is Indian Prime Minister? Who cares
for him in the United-States??? Diplomatically,India is one of the
weakest countries in the world pretty much impotent. We can't even
have our way with Pakistan, forget others.
There is so much hate against Americans
By: kumar | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 14:22:38 PM
I see most of the comments have vented their anger on Americans.
America is a very free country where people from almost all countries
come and practice their faith without any issues. They bring up their
children without any fear and give them what is possible in heaven.
Finally when Pakistan sends terrorists to India, I dont see such
emails written against Pakistan. The question Vikram parents have to
answer is why their son who got an opportunity to study in one of the
top colleges in world used that place to write hate emails and issue
threats against Americans officials. It is a crime in most countries.
In countries like Sri Lanka the entire family will disapper over
night.
You are wrong on many counts Kumar
By: aqmamin | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 19:59:02 PM
you are wrong on many counts Kumar, your use of the word heaven is
inappropriate, America may be a prosperous country but in terms of sex
morality, America is an obnoxious country and India is a heaven as our
folk still stick to their culture and religion to a very large extent.
When Pakistan terrorists attack and kill the innocent or the Gujarati
terrorists killed a few thousand innocent minorities in 2002, there
were innumerable e mails appearing on all major newspapers, but
thousands against Pakistan. Well, Vikram did what he did, simply
because he does not want to be a stinging consumer or a stinging
materialist as you are. Vikram believes in the Laws Of God and feels
that he got to open his mouth and shout when there is oppression or
injustice. No one who has conscience( do you have I wonder?) will keep
quiet when 12 lac Iraqi innocent people were killed by Bush based on
lies like Weapons of mass Destruction, involvement in 9/11, link
between Osama and Saddam Hussein, Promoting democracy, Change of Regime
( all are pucca lies and meant as pretext to colonise a nation) Wake
up Kumar try to serve the humanity as Vikram has done, in a small way
by raising your voice. Simply because America pays you, you do not
have to sell your humanity and intelligence.
Might is Right
By: Shaikh Azher Yousuf | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 16:27:45 PM
Mr. Kumar just read again American History, meticulously from her
formation to till date, and I am sure if your senses are working
properly you will recognize the real face of America. for instance
read the struggle of Martin Luther King, It's pity that an Indian is
thinking positively about a country which have tainted her hands with
millions of innocent human beings.
What happened to Malcolm X in America?
By: patutadil | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 19:37:51 PM
Good comments Yousuf, you should have added the name of Malcolm X
also, what were his principles and why was he and by whom he was
assassinated? Also what was the punishment given by the Iraqi law to
an Iraqi who decided to give a farewell gift to Bush by throwing his
shoes at him. American soldiers committing criminal offences abroad
are brought home and given punishments given to Kindergarten kids but
foreigners fighting for human rights are punished for 5 years, but the
most depressing thing that I never understand is why Indian political
administration has been keener than young lovers to sleep with the
American political administration? Imagine if an American student
studying in India has sent a hate mail to Manmohan Singh( our PM) and
does any Indian believe that that American would have been given 57
months imprisonment? Never why because America is the world policeman,
so a slave nation like India can not punish its master.It is as simple
as that
American laws are discriminatory, one sided and oppressive dealing
with non-whites
By: aqmamin | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 12:57:58 PM
The term used in Arabic language for what Vikram did, is Jihad
(meaning struggling, taking serious efforts to fight again injustice)
every major religion in the world emphasizes on social justice and
fight against injustice and oppression. The entire Mahabharata is
based on this truth, fight for justice even if the wrongdoers are your
kith and kin. The small mistake that Vikram made was a metaphorical
threat, except for that what he did was not wrong and sentencing him
for three years of imprisonment goes against American freedom of
speech and its constitutional guarantees. The American judges show
utter discrimination simply because the accused is a coloured person,
a non-white. Americans committing obnoxious crimes in the occupying
countries do not come under the laws of the occupying country but
American laws, but the same American law says that the US has the
right to arrest a foreigner and bring the accused to the US. Will the
US allow other nations to implement similar laws?
Face of hypocrisy of the west...
By: Jem Hassan | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 12:16:32 PM
They can abuse....make derogatory comments about
Gods...prophets...spiritual leaders....and even post cartoons with no
regrets...it is part of freedom of speech!...but when you touch their
leaders' butt or holocaust, there is high possibility of you being
prosecuted or put in prison for years.An Austrian historian had been
in jail for questioning the credentials of holocaust.He said it is
doubtful to confirm whether Hitler had persecuted 6 millions Jews or
less and a matter of research...see the double face!.What Malaysian ex-
PM said is correct that the west is running with Zionist proxy!
MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE BY US JUDICIARY?
By: M.Arun | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 20:55:08 PM
TRUTHS CANNOT BE WIPED OUT BY INTELLECTUAL, LEGAL & ARMED MIGHT. AT
THE HEIGHT OF FIERCE ANTI-COMMUNIST HYSTERIA UNLEASHED BY McCATHYISM &
ANTI-JEWISH FERVOUR IN THE US IN THE US THE TRIAL & EXECUTION OF
JULIUS & ETHEL ROSENBERG WAS MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE. THE AMERICAN
STATE & ITS JUDICIARY LYNCH ITS OWN CITIZENS FOR THE WRONG REASONS,
NEITHER TO SAFEGUARD FREEDOM &DEMOCRACY OR TO PROTECT THE VULNERABLE
CITIZENS AS THEY ARE DEVISED TO SERVE THE VESTED INTERESTS WITH THE
NUMBER GAME OF VOTE BANKS. NAZISM OF HITLER TOO UNLEASHED ANTI-JEWISH
ZEAL & ERECTED GAS CHAMBERS AS THE FINAL SOLUTION TO END THE NON-ARYAN
PROBLEM & THIS IS AN IRREDEEMABLE HISTORICAL FACT WITH VISIBLE
VESTIGES.
Well de deserves it
By: raj | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 11:22:44 AM
These are questions we have to ask: 1. Why did vikram wrote such hate
mails on the top most US administration officials. 2. Does he think he
can do that in India and get away? His parents have to answer that. 3.
Reading the news looks like he has not repented. He has to see
hundreds of thousands of Indians with little education or basic
education moving to US and prospering well. Why did such a bright boy
doing PHd in a reputed university should do this.
'Buddhi' or 'Buddhu'
By: Iquebal Ahmed | Saturday , 12 Dec '09 11:21:18 AM
Mr. Vikram Buddhi(inteligent) has behaved like a 'Buddhu'(ideot) and
invited wrath of Yankees on himself. He is an eminent Methematical
scholar of highest order. Efforts should be made at Prime Ministreals
level to bring him back home.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/buddhis-father-says-us-trial-miscarriage-of-justice/553318/0
bademiyansubhanallah
Mayura Janwalkar / DNA
Sunday, December 13, 2009 2:10 IST
Mumbai: Vinod Bhatia first came to India in 1962 on a ship from
Mozambique as a 19-year-old. His family was uprooted by the-then
Portuguese rulers, as after the liberation of Goa in 1961, the
Portuguese government had expelled Indian nationals from Mozambique,
earlier a Portuguese territory.
Forty-seven years later, Bhatia is still nurturing a hope -- one that
he inherited from his late father -- that the Indian government will
compensate him for having to leave everything behind in Mozambique.
Thanks to the Right to Information (RTI) Act, Bhatia, a Portuguese
national, found out that the total claims of the 2,300 Mozambique
repatriates as of 1979 were to the tune of Rs5.30 crore. Through two
RTI applications made in May and November this year, Bhatia received
replies from the Union ministry of home and external affairs and he
was told that the decision of the government regarding the
compensation is final.
"I was born in Mozambique and my father had a flourishing garments
business there. We had a 10,000 sq ft property which included our shop
and home," Bhatia, now 65, said.
"My father made petitions to the government of India in 1963 and filed
his claims with the Chief Settlement Commission. We had made claims
worth Rs13 lakh then." He had received Rs84,000 in 1982, in the form
of ex-gratia. Bhatia says that an association was formed by the
Mozambique repatriates, but with its members scattered across the
country they did not persist with their claims.
In a treaty between India and Portugal in 1974, the countries had
agreed to settle claims of repatriated citizens through bilateral
negotiations. "My father kept pursuing the matter with the government
until he died in 1973. We were given no medical, educational or travel
benefits from the government. Having neglected us for 46 years, the
government must now pay 100 per cent penalty on the claimed amount
with interest." The outstanding amount of Bhatia's claims, at that
rate, would now be Rs100 crore, he says.
"While there were rehabilitation schemes for those who came from
Pakistan at the time of Partition, there should have been similar
schemes for Mozambique repatriates as well," said Bhatia's advocate
Pradeep Havnur. He added that they are awaiting the Centre's reply but
if they continue to be dissatisfied, they will consider moving court.
In 1961, when Goa, Daman, Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli were liberated
and the Portuguese Army was airlifted from Goa, the Portuguese
government had asked Indian nationals from Mozambique to leave the
country. "I still remember that some Portuguese officials came to my
father's shop to serve evacuation notices. We were told that if we did
not leave, we would be detained in dark quarters," Bhatia said What
followed was the
repatriation of 600 Indian families.
Bhatia said, "I came on a vessel that left from Mozambique and landed
in Mumbai (then Bombay) on March 12, 1963." With no accommodation
provided by the government, Bhatia spent the first few weeks in Mumbai
at a dharamshala near the GPO. After living with a relative for six
months near Girgaum Chowpatty, Bhatia moved to Vile Parle and now
lives in Andheri (W).
chhotemianinshallah
15 Dec 2009, 0526 hrs IST, ET Bureau
NEW DELHI: The Manmohan Singh government on Monday informed the Rajya
Sabha that Delhi Lt Governor Tejinder Khanna had been advised to
decide by the month-end on CBI request for prosecution of former Union
minister Jagdish Tytler and former Lok Sabha member Sajjan Kumar, who
were named by the Nanavati Commission for their role in the 1984 anti-
Sikh riots.
“We have advised the LG to take the decision as early as possible. I
will once again request that he must decide before the end of the
month,” union home minister P Chidambaram told the Rajya Sabha this
evening while responding to the discussion on the calling attention
motion moved on the subject by independent member Tarlochan Singh.
Dissatisfied with the minister’s reply, BJP and its alliance partner,
the Shiromani Akali Dal, staged a walk-out from the House, accusing
the government of doing nothing to ensure justice, even after the
lapse of 25 years of the riots, described as “a state-sponsored
massacre of innocents” by leader of the opposition Arun Jaitley and as
a “genocide” by Mr Tarlochan Singh.
The CBI, Mr Chidambaram told the House, had completed investigation or
re-investigation of seven cases against Tytler, Kumar and the late
Dharam Das Shastri, former Karol Bagh MP. “In four cases, the
investigating agency has sought permission from the competent
authority, the LG of Delhi, to prosecute the accused persons,” he
said.
Refuting the charges levelled by Mr Jaitley that he was a “friend” of
one of the accused, Sajjan Kumar, Mr Chidambaram said: “I am not
defending anyone.”
Maintaining that there was no interference in the cases relating to
the anti-Sikh riots, the minister said his only advice was to proceed
on an “impartial, fearless and speedy” inquiry.
Speaking on the motion, Mr Jaitley lamented that all institutions of
democratic India had collapsed during the riots. “The police was a
silent spectator — it refused to protect the victims, and its
investigations were sabotaged. Twenty-five years later, we find the
victims still crying for justice. The sitting judge of the Supreme
Court who headed the Commission of Inquiry, Justice Ranganath Mishra
was unwilling to see the ruling party’s hand in the killings. Justice
Mishra, post-retirement, was rewarded with a Rajya Sabha berth and
then the chairmanship of a Commission. The government was not
sympathetic at all,” the Opposition leader said.
The House witnessed noisy scenes when Mr Jaitley cited the then prime
minister the late Rajiv Gandhi’s now-famous remarks “...when a big
tree falls, the earth shakes” as his justification of the killings.
Congress leader P J Kurian, who was on the chair, said the
“allegation” would not go on record, prompting Mr Jaitley to say,
“Then we might as well wind up the discussion.”
bademiyansubhanallah
TNN 11 December 2009, 03:08pm IST
LUCKNOW: The Lucknow Bench of Allahabad high court commuted the death
sentence of the main convict to life sentence in the Manjunath
Shanmugam The court upheld the life sentence of five others but
acquitted two other accused in the case.
The double bench hearing the case comprising Justice K K Mishra and
Justice D V Sharma, concluded the hearing into the case on Thursday.
The court felt this did not amount to the rarest of rare cases and so
the death sentence was commuted.
A management graduate from Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow
(IIM-L), Manjunath was working as a sales officer with the Indian Oil
Corporation (IOC). He had exposed an adulteration racket at an IOC
petrol pump in Lakhimpur Kheri that was owned by Pawan. He was shot
dead on November 19, 2005, when he reached the gas station of the
accused to collect samples of adulterated petrol that was being
allegedly sold from the gas station.
The case came before the Lucknow bench of Allahabad high court for
confirmation of the death sentence awarded to the prime accused in the
murder case, Monu Mittal alias Pawan. The remaining 7 accused in the
case were awarded sentences extending up to life terms by the district
sessions judge (DSJ) Lakhimpur Kheri, S M A Abidi, in March 2007.
Delivering the verdict, the DSJ at that time had said that the murder
of Manjunath, 27, on November 19, 2005, was a pre-planned one because
the weapons used in the crime and recovered from the possession of the
accused, belonged to persons residing in different localities, who had
gathered at the site to murder Manjunath.
The accused had placed Manjunath's body on the rear seat of a car and
deputed two of their associates to dispose off the body in a canal in
Sitapur. The accused ran out of luck after a police team on routine
early morning patrol duty spotted the car and noticed that its
occupants were behaving abnormally as the car went past the police
team.
This left the patrol party suspicious and they chased the car and
intercepted it after a hot pursuit. Police recovered the bullet-
riddled body of Manjunath and arrested the two car occupants, who then
led the police to the other accused.
chhotemianinshallah
STAFF WRITER 17:43 HRS IST
New Delhi, Dec 16 (PTI) The Delhi High Court has acquitted underworld
don Dawood Ibrahim's alleged frontman Romesh Sharma who was undergoing
life imprisonment in fashion designer and his girlfriend Kunjum
Budhiraja murder case.
A division bench comprising Justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Suresh Kait
refused to believe the police version that Sharma had conspired to
kill his girlfriend as she was becoming "over bearing and "demanding"
for him.
"We hold that far from the motive being established as alleged by the
prosecution, the reverse stands established that Romesh Sharma and
Kunjum were in love and desired the company of each other. It does not
establish that Sharma had was fed up with her," the bench said while
setting aside the conviction of Sharma.
http://www.ptinews.com/news/426658_Kunjum-murder-case--HC-acquits-Romesh-Sharma
bademiyansubhanallah
Case of injustice
T.K. RAJALAKSHMI
in Chandigarh
After protracted litigation, a former Director General of Police in
Haryana gets off with a light sentence for molesting a schoolgirl.
AKHILESH KUMAR
S.P.S. Rathore, former Haryana DGP, who was convicted in the case of
molesting a minor girl in 1990, makes his way to a court in Panchkula
with his wife and counsel, Abha, to apply for anticipatory bail on
December 30, 2009.
FOR nearly two decades, the case was out of public memory. All except
those who were keen to secure justice for a life that was snuffed out
early had forgotten it. So, it was with mixed emotions that people
welcomed the verdict, on December 21, 2009, of the Chief Judicial
Magistrate of a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court,
sentencing the former Director General of Police of Haryana, Shambu
Pratap Singh Rathore, to six months’ rigorous imprisonment and a fine
of Rs.1,000 for molesting a 14-year-old girl in 1990. The charge under
Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code (assault or use of criminal force
on a woman with intent to outrage her modesty) was established after
protracted litigation by those who kept alive their hopes of justice.
“The guilt of the convict has already been proved up to hilt,” noted
Chief Judicial Magistrate Jasbir Singh Sidhu in his 97-page order,
adding that the allegations were of moral turpitude and were of a
serious nature, particularly in the circumstances when the victim was
a minor. Dismissing the arguments of the defence counsel highlighting
Rathore’s meritorious record, the judge noted that a meritorious
service record and high moral character were two different things and
that it could not be presumed merely on the grounds of meritorious
service that a person would not commit an act of molestation.
The victim was not yet 15 and was a student of Class X in a public
school when her life fell apart on August 12, 1990. Rathore, then a
Deputy Inspector General of Police serving with the Bhakra Beas
Management Board, was also the president of the Haryana Lawn Tennis
Association (HLTA) at Panchkula, where the teenager and her friends
had just started playing tennis. The victim’s father had plans of
sending his daughter, who had lost her mother several years earlier,
to Canada for a bright future.
Rathore convinced him that his daughter was a promising tennis player
and that he would give her extra coaching. Rathore molested her in the
office of the HLTA. This was accidently witnessed by her friend
Aradhana, and the very first inquiry report submitted by the then
Director General of Police, R.R. Singh, confirmed it. Instead of
taking action, the State government led by Hukam Singh ordered
departmental proceedings against Rathore. No first information report
(FIR) was registered. Three years after the incident, the girl
committed suicide by consuming poison.
The victim’s family was aided in their fight by Aradhana, her father,
Anand Prakash, a government employee, and mother, Madhu Prakash. Madhu
Prakash told Frontline that Rathore should have been booked early on
under Section 306 of the IPC for abetment to suicide as well.
Nevertheless, she said, the sentence of six months’ jail for Rathore,
who had delayed the process of justice all these years, was still an
achievement. Women’s organisations such as the All India Democratic
Women’s Association (AIDWA) and the National Commission for Women and
citizens’ forums like the newly constituted Democratic Forum in
Chandigarh demanded that the government take the matter forward by
registering a case under Section 306 against Rathore.
Delayed FIR
Following a writ petition by Madhu Prakash in 1997, the Punjab and
Haryana High Court, on August 21, 1998, ordered the registration of an
FIR and handed over the investigation to the CBI. Rathore appealed
against it in the Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court’s order.
Finally, an FIR was registered on December 29, 1999, six years after
the teenager committed suicide.
While the order of Justice Sidhu on the whole has been appreciated,
many feel that the judgment has come too late and that it has
overlooked the fact that the molestation and the subsequent harassment
meted out to the family led the teenager to kill herself. What
prevented any agency of the State from booking the senior police
officer on the additional charge of abetment to suicide baffles
everyone. The fact that it took 19 years to establish a case of
molestation was a setback in itself.
Nevertheless, in a State infamous for its shabby treatment of women –
where the skewed sex ratio has been an issue of concern for long and
where honour killings have enjoyed public and political sanction – the
verdict was a relief. But when Rathore got bail soon after, the
public, political parties and women’s organisations were outraged and
they demanded that the bail be cancelled. Though the government did
little in that direction, after some initial prevarication the police
registered three FIRs based on complaints by the victim’s father and
her brother against Rathore and four others under various sections
including abetment to suicide.
“We want the case to be reopened and want to know clearly why the
delays happened and who all were responsible for them,” said Madhu
Prakash. She said fast-track courts were needed to deal with crimes
against women and children. “There are so many girls who do not speak
up. Even if they do, there is hardly anyone to speak up for them,” she
added.
She said anyone familiar with the case would know that harassment of
the family led the girl to suicide. “Her father was removed from his
job. They sold their home because of sustained harassment and moved to
Shimla [Himachal Pradesh] on rent. The son, who was a student of St.
Joseph’s, would have had a bright career but for the false cases
registered against him,” she said.
A CANDLE-LIGHT PROTEST at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi demanding that a
case of abetment to suicide be registered against Rathore, on December
24.
Madhu Prakash said her family too was harassed. “My husband was
charged with many cases; we faced threats as well. We feared that
anything could happen if our children ventured out. My husband was
forced to seek retirement and we started getting pension benefits
after a protracted struggle. I used to get calls saying that my
daughter had run away from her hostel. It was to depress us mentally.
Criminal cases were filed against us in 1991. We have a defamation
case also against us. There have been more than 400 hearings in this
case, in Ambala, Patiala and now Chandigarh. After so many years, all
that Rathore gets is six months’ imprisonment, and then he gets bail,”
she said.
The victim’s brother had as many as six cases of car theft registered
against him, all of which were later dropped for lack of evidence.
Madhu Prakash said that a Patiala court had ordered that he be given
compensation, but Rathore got a restraining order from the Supreme
Court. She said the State owed much more to the family of the victim,
including compensation.
In an application to the Special Judicial Magistrate, CBI, Ambala,
Madhu Prakash along with four others had stated that the teenager
committed suicide because of continual harassment. For instance, her
name was struck off from the rolls of Sacred Heart School, Chandigarh,
on the grounds that she had not paid the school fees. As the role of
the school came under the scanner, the administration of the Union
Territory of Chandigarh ordered a magisterial inquiry into the
incident on December 29, 2009. After examining the statements of
persons at present and formerly associated with the school, including
Father Thomas Anchanikal, Vicar General and spokesperson of the
Chandigarh, Shimla Diocese, the report concluded that the school had
selectively followed the instructions/rules mentioned in the school
diary and singled out the girl for striking off her name from the
rolls.
The inquiry report, a copy of which is available with Frontline,
noted:
“This is, therefore, a case which clearly demonstrates beyond any
manner of doubt that the school authorities acted in a mala fide,
biased, arbitrary, indiscriminate and unwarranted manner while
expelling … [the teenager] from the school. It seems strange that the
principle and practice of removing the name of the student from the
rolls for non-payment of fees was applied only in the case of [her]. …
Sister Sebastina’s statement that the decision of striking off the
name of … [the girl] from the school rolls was taken by her
independently and that there was no pressure from any quarter that
influenced her decision in this regard whatsoever cannot be believed
in the face of telling circumstances of the case. From the discussions
made herein above, it is amply evident that the school authorities …
did not act independently or impartially but under acute pressure in
invoking Rule 35 of the Pupil’s Code of Conduct since the same rule
has never been applied to any of the 135 similar cases dug out by the
undersigned from the official records of the school. This act of the
school authorities certainly would have contributed to mortifying the
self-esteem, self-confidence, integrity and reputation of a young
minor girl … thereby traumatising and indelibly scarring her
impressionable mind.
“With regard to the allegation in the statement of … [the girl’s
father] that the school authorities expelled … [the young girl] from
the school at the behest of Sh. S.P.S. Rathore, although no direct
evidence is available, it is quite probable in view of the strong
circumstantial evidence to the effect that … [the girl’s] expulsion
was proximate in time and followed close on the heels of the incident
of molestation. This aspect in my view requires an in-depth and
thorough probe.”
Madhu Prakash said slogans were raised in favour of Rathore and
against the victim’s family in a demonstration outside their house by
the residents of Rajiv Colony. The fact of the demonstration by some
200 people was corroborated by an inspector of Panchkula, Anil Dhawan.
This was confirmed in R.R. Singh’s report.
R.R. Singh also observed that “Rathore wanted to prolong the inquiry
on one pretext or the other”. He noted: “I am of the considered view
that whatever … a small girl of 15 years has stated about her
molestation by Shri S.P.S. Rathore is based on true facts and I am of
the considered opinion that a cognisable offence is made out.” J.K.
Duggal, who was Home Secretary from 1990 to 1992, told Frontline that
he thoroughly agreed with R.R. Singh’s report, which recommended the
registration of an FIR.
Pankaj Bharadwaj, lawyer for the Prakash family, said that the
victim’s brother was never examined though the CBI, which was handed
over charge of the investigation in 1998 by an order of the Punjab and
Haryana High Court, gave the implausible explanation that he had not
made himself available for examination. He said the CBI had not even
taken into account the victim’s post-mortem and inquest reports. In
fact, the CBI, while concluding its investigation, maintained that no
offences under Sections 306 and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to
insult the modesty of a woman) were made out.
The Special Judicial Magistrate, CBI, Ambala, Jagdev Singh Dhanjal,
thought otherwise. He concluded on October 23, 2001, that a prima
facie case existed for the addition of offence under Section 306
against Rathore. Rathore challenged this in the High Court. “The CBI
did not collect any evidence pertaining to Section 306. [The victim’s
brother’s] statement was never recorded. The fudged inquest report was
not taken into account. Neither were the statements of [the father],
Aradhana or her father taken,” said Bharadwaj, who got involved in the
case in 1996 after the Prakash family approached him. He said the
victim was confined to her house as even going to the market was
fraught with the possibility of harassment. He added that the boy, who
was detained by the police for nearly two months, was released from
police custody the day after his sister killed herself.
All attempts by the Prakashes to get Section 306 added to Section 354
were frustrated after a single-judge Bench of Justice R.C. Kathuria of
the Punjab and Haryana High Court dismissed their application. It was
established in the chemical examination report of February 21, 1994,
that the girl’s death was a case of poisoning from consuming a “chloro
compound group of insecticides”. The High Court quashed the Special
Judicial Magistrate’s order of October 23, 2001, considering that the
victim had not made a police statement during the investigation of the
case or that she had not come in contact with Rathore after the
incident of August 1990 until the time of her death, and that no
grievance had been made with regard to the harassment faced by her or
her state of mind until her death.
Political capital
AKHILESH KUMAR
M.S. BITTA, chairman of the All India Anti-Terrorist Front, greeting
Aradhana and her parents who pursued the case against S.P.S. Rathore,
in Panchkula on December 28.
Soon after the girl’s suicide, the charges against Rathore were
dropped. This was during the tenure of the Bhajan Lal government (1991
to 1996). In the same period, false cases of car theft were registered
against her brother. In November 1994, the government promoted Rathore
as Additional DGP. Between 1996 and 1999, when the Haryana Vikas Party-
Bharatiya Janata Party coalition led by Bansi Lal was ruling the
State, Rathore was made DGP. He was suspended briefly but was
reinstated as Additional DGP.
The Om Prakash Chautala government, which took over in July 1999,
ordered a departmental inquiry. But Rathore was exonerated in the
molestation case and reinstated as DGP. Following the filing of a
fresh charge sheet by the CBI on November 16, 2000, Rathore was sent
on leave, and in two years, he retired from service.
The current Congress government led by Bhupinder Singh Hooda seems to
enjoy the discomfiture of the main Opposition party, the Indian
National Lok Dal (INLD), and its leader Om Prakash Chautala, who was
indirectly responsible for delaying the prosecution of Rathore. Sampat
Singh, now a Congress legislator, was the Home Minister of the INLD
when Rathore was given a promotion.
At present, more than the Rathore case, it is the byelection of
Ellenabad on January 20 that is worrying the mainstream parties in the
State. The byelection follows the resignation of Chautala from the
constituency after he won from both Ellenabad and Dariba Kalan in the
Assembly elections. Both the Congress and the INLD are keen to win
from here. Thus the sparring between the two parties over the degree
of political patronage extended to Rathore has to do more with
immediate political and electoral gains rather than any serious
introspection of what went wrong.
“What about the judiciary? Just as the police didn’t do a good job and
succumbed to political pressure, the judiciary did not do justice,”
said Manjeet Kaur, a lawyer of the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
Unfazed that she might be pulled up for her candid remarks, Manjeet
Kaur told Frontline that the State could go in for appeal asking for
two years’ imprisonment, which is the maximum in a case of
molestation. “We have seen how a Station House Officer or a Sub
Inspector behaves even with us. With ordinary people, it is much
worse. And a DGP is like an atomic weapon,” she said.
Lawyer Rajvinder Singh Bains, too, of the High Court said that the
State could take up the issue of false cases against the victim’s
brother and take action against the police personnel who harassed him,
a minor at that point, and against the doctors who falsified the
inquest report. The High Court, he said, could order the recording of
further evidence, reopen investigation and cancel Rathore’s bail.
The involvement of AIDWA and its State president Jagmati Sangwan has
been notable. The organisation has consistently demanded for Rathore’s
conviction and held demonstrations from time to time at various
places, including Ambala, to press for the inclusion of the charge of
abetment to suicide. “Rathore said that we were naxalite women and
that he feared for his life from us. He wanted the proceedings to be
shifted from Ambala,” Jagmati Sangwan told Frontline. She said the
Rajput Sabha held demonstrations against AIDWA. Also, during
Chautala’s regime, the State Women’s Commission issued a statement
supporting Rathore and simultaneously decrying the activities of
AIDWA.
In the teenager’s case, it took 10 years for an FIR to be registered
and 19 years for the molester to get a conviction. The larger issue is
more about how women are treated in this country, and about the gap
between the realities on ground and what is delivered in the name of
justice.
Volume 27 - Issue 02 :: Jan. 16-29, 2010
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20100129270200400.htm
bademiyansubhanallah
The rot within
V. VENKATESAN
The inordinate delay in the conviction and sentencing of S.P.S.
Rathore raises uncomfortable questions about India’s criminal justice
system.
PTI
PANCHKULA RESIDENTS PROTESTING against Rathore outside the district
court on January 7.
THE belated conviction and sentencing of S.P.S. Rathore, former
Director General of Police, Haryana, for molesting a minor girl two
decades ago has certain lessons for India’s criminal jurisprudence.
There was outrage after the trial court’s ruling on December 21 for
more than one reason, which included the inordinate delay in the
filing of the first information report (FIR) after the incident and
the sentence – six months’ imprisonment and a fine of Rs.1,000 – that
is lighter than what is warranted under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Above all was the shocking discovery by civil society that Rathore had
evaded all these years charges of harassment of the victim and
abetment to her suicide, destruction of evidence and tampering with
her post-mortem reports, illegal confinement of her brother and
attempt to murder him, criminal conspiracy and misuse of power.
Although the victim made the complaint regarding the offence on August
16, 1990, the FIR was registered only on December 29, 1999. That too
only after the intervention of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. This
was upheld by the Supreme Court.
An FIR refers to information given by anyone to the officer-in-charge
of a police station in relation to the commission of a cognisable
offence, and which is first in point of time, and on the strength of
which the police begin investigation into that offence. Section 354
(assault or use of criminal force on a woman with intent to outrage
her modesty) of the IPC, under which Rathore has been convicted, deals
with a cognisable offence. The non-registration of an FIR for nearly a
decade after the commission of the crime meant that Rathore could
evade arrest and interrogation during that period. Had the FIR been
promptly registered before the girl committed suicide in 1993, it is
believed, the evidence against Rathore could have been stronger than
what the court could rely on after her suicide. Rathore even
challenged the authenticity of the victim’s signature on the original
complaint submitted to the authorities in 1990. The trial court,
however, relied on the evidentiary value of signatures of others on
the complaint for basing its conviction.
In order to minimise the chances of the police not filing an FIR
against a police officer, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, on
December 28, urged them to register all complaints as FIRs. The heads
of police stations, he pointed out, could be asked to give specific
reasons for registration or non-registration of a case after receiving
a complaint. Even if a complaint is false, the police have to register
an FIR and investigate it before closing it, he advised the States,
which have the exclusive responsibility for the police. Chidambaram,
however, ruled out any formal advisory to the States on the issue.
Observers suggest that an amendment of the Code of Criminal Procedure
(Cr.P.C) to make FIRs mandatory on receipt of a complaint might help.
But that would require a huge increase in the number of police
personnel, for which the States and the Centre are not ready
financially.
It appears, therefore, that the Home Ministry is proposing superficial
reforms, which are neither practical nor relevant to address the root
cause of cases like that of Rathore who allegedly manipulated the
system in his favour. Unfortunately, much of the anger against Rathore
has not manifested in terms of a campaign for reforms in the police
force.
Most State governments are reluctant to comply with the Supreme Court
directives issued in September 2006 in the Prakash Singh case. These
directives aim to insulate the police force in the States from
political pressure and make it truly professional, besides making
legislative changes. Even the Centre has not shown any enthusiasm to
carry out police reforms. The court has now set up a monitoring
committee with a two-year mandate to report on compliance with its
directives.
The six months’ imprisonment and the Rs.1,000 fine for Rathore comes
when the maximum punishment under Section 354 of the IPC is two years.
The trial court’s justification of the lesser sentence citing the
prolonged trial and Rathore’s age (68 years) was least convincing to
any observer.
Following the trial court’s judgment, and the uproar in the media and
civil society, the Haryana government set up a special investigation
team (SIT) to investigate the three fresh FIRs registered on the basis
of complaints filed by the victim’s brother and father, and after
obtaining legal advice. These FIRs pertain to the non-bailable charge,
under Section 306 of the IPC (abetment to suicide), of attempt to
murder and harassment of the victim’s brother, doctoring of the post-
mortem report of the victim after her suicide.
Rathore has questioned the legality of these FIRs, while seeking
anticipatory bail. The Punjab and Haryana High Court and the Supreme
Court have reviewed two of these charges and have given relief to
Rathore. In the first case, Justice R.C. Kathuria of the Punjab and
Haryana High Court quashed an order of the Special Judicial
Magistrate, CBI, Ambala, dated October 23, 2001, concluding that a
prima facie case for the addition of offence under Section 306 of the
IPC was made out against Rathore and, accordingly, directing the
committal of the case to the Court of Sessions. Justice Kathuria,
while giving relief to Rathore, relied on the fact that at no stage
had the victim made any statement to the police during the
investigation of the case and that until her death in 1993 she had
never come in contact with Rathore directly.
The Judge seems to have overlooked the fact that the police did not
investigate the molestation case until 1999 when the FIR was filed and
that there was no occasion for the victim to make a statement to the
police.
The Special Judicial Magistrate, Central Bureau of Investigation
(CBI), Ambala, added the offence under Section 306 IPC in the CBI’s
charge sheet on the basis of an application made by Madhu Prakash, the
mother of Aradhana, the victim’s friend and an eyewitness to the
molestation. In her application, Madhu Prakash stated that the CBI,
during the investigation, had recorded the statement of key witnesses,
including herself, that Rathore had made life hell for the victim,
which led her to commit suicide in 1993. Additionally, it was also
submitted that the victim’s brother was falsely implicated in six
criminal cases at the behest of Rathore. Of these, the court
discharged him in four cases. In the remaining two, the police found
that the allegations were not substantiated and dropped the
proceedings against him.
More important, it was also brought to the notice of the SJM that the
CBI had not examined the victim’s brother and had not taken into
account the post-mortem report and the inquest report of the victim.
Before the SJM, the CBI contested Madhu Prakash’s application for
inclusion of Section 306 of the IPC in its charge sheet because it did
not find the applicability of Sections 306 and 509 (word, gesture or
act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) against Rathore.
However, the CBI took a different stand before Justice Kathuria. It
said the witnesses had said during the investigation that Rathore had
indeed harassed the victim, her friend Aradhana and their family
members after the molestation incident. The witnesses had also
apparently said that the victim could not even visit the nearby market
and that it was Aradhana who used to make minor purchases for her. The
CBI also said that the fact of the false implication of the victim’s
brother in criminal cases and his being beaten up by personnel of the
Haryana Police at the behest of Rathore were reported to it.
The Investigating Officer of the CBI verified these statements of
witnesses and summed up his findings. First, he said, the victim’s
name was struck off from the Sacred Heart School, Chandigarh, in
September 1990 because of non-payment of fees from April 1990 onwards.
Second, he cited the statements of the victim’s grandfather and two
maternal uncles that the victim’s death was from taking weight-
reduction medicines, and that they did not suspect the involvement of
anyone in her death.
Third, he said that the victim’s brother did not make himself
available and hence could not be examined. Fourth, contradicting the
statements of the victim’s grandfather and the uncles, he suggested
that the cause of the victim’s death, as per chemical examination, was
poisoning. Based on the I.O.’s findings, Justice Kathuria concluded
that Section 306 did not apply to Rathore.
Did the CBI refuse to include Section 306 in its charge sheet against
Rathore under pressure? Former CBI joint director R.M. Singh said his
attempts to charge Rathore with abetment to suicide were thwarted.
When asked why the CBI, during his term, did not charge Rathore with
abetment to suicide of the victim, the CBI’s then Director, R.K.
Raghavan, said: “The insinuation that the CBI acted under pressure
from the accused is without basis. Whatever decisions were taken were
on the basis of facts collected by the Investigating Officer and later
subjected to strict legal scrutiny. These decisions have since been
upheld by the court.”
On April 12, 2002, the Supreme Court rejected Madhu Prakash’s appeal
against Justice Kathuria’s judgment without stating any reasons.
Observers point out that both the High Court and the Supreme Court
only discharged (and not acquitted after a proper trial) Rathore from
Section 306. Therefore, a fresh FIR making the charge of abetment to
suicide is valid, they say.
Rathore got relief again from the Supreme Court in 2005, when it set
aside the order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court directing the
District Judge to conduct an inquiry to ascertain the truth of the
averments made by the victim’s brother in his affidavit on December 3,
2001, that he was implicated in false criminal cases and harassed by
the police at the instance of Rathore. The High Court had sought to
know from Rathore and the Haryana government why they should not be
burdened with the compensation awarded to the victim’s brother for the
harassment caused to him by falsely implicating him in car theft
cases. The Supreme Court gave relief to Rathore on technical grounds
by holding that neither the news report (on the basis of which the
High Court took suo motu action) nor the judgment discharging the
victim’s brother in the car theft cases mentioned Rathore’s
involvement. The High Court had deemed it proper to direct an inquiry
since the matter was of serious nature involving the violation of the
fundamental rights of the victim’s brother.
On January 3, the Central Police Awards Committee of the Ministry of
Home Affairs decided to strip Rathore of his Police Medal, awarded in
1985 for meritorious service.
It also took a generic decision to authorise the Ministry to recommend
the withdrawal of police medals from all persons who are convicted for
moral turpitude and for an act that brings disrespect to the police
forces. Union Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily has proposed a new law,
Sexual Offences (Special Courts) Bill, 2010, to make character
evidence illegal and sexual offences cognisable.
These steps, though important, are inadequate to address the concerns
in the aftermath of the Rathore case. In an open letter to Moily on
January 5, the representatives of 14 women’s groups and 44 leading
women’s activists pointed out that Section 354 of the IPC did not
redress sexual harassment of women in public or private spaces. It
assumes that only some women and children have modesty and are seen as
deserving the protection of law, they said.
They have suggested a gradation of sexual assault which squarely name
sexual harassment, molestation, stalking, parading and stripping as
sexual violence (not amounting to rape). Hopefully, various civil
society groups will seek to influence the government and Parliament to
reform suitably the current laws concerning violence against women.
Volume 27 - Issue 02 :: Jan. 16-29, 2010
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20100129270200900.htm
bademiyansubhanallah
‘Deep infirmities in the legal system’
T.K. RAJALAKSHMI
Interview with Brinda Karat, Rajya Sabha member and vice-president,
AIDWA.
R.V. MOORTHY
Brinda Karat: “The government has a short attention span on issues
relating to women and children.”
THE Left parties in Haryana and the All India Democratic Women’s
Association were among the handful of organisations that campaigned in
a sustained manner for the registration of cases against S.P.S.
Rathore, who was finally held guilty of molesting a teenager 19 years
ago. Brinda Karat, Rajya Sabha member and vice-president, AIDWA, took
the family of the victim’s friend to meet Haryana Chief Minister
Bhupinder Singh Hooda and demanded that the government reopen the case
and set up a committee to look into the bureaucratic and political
lapses that resulted in the denial of justice. Excerpts from an
interview she gave Frontline:
What does the entire episode signify in a larger sense?
S.P.S. Rathore is a criminal and his place is in jail. His bail should
be cancelled. Why hasn’t the Central Bureau of Investigation asked for
the cancellation of his bail when he has already been convicted for
the molestation of a minor. He has been found guilty of molesting a
minor and his jail sentence should be enhanced to the maximum. The
entire episode indicates the deep infirmities in our legal system. It
reflects the sickness in the system, which permits the use of power to
subvert the processes of justice. The victim was a minor. What stands
out is the use of Section 354 in this case, which guarantees two
years’ maximum imprisonment, whereas this case is about a custodial
crime against a minor.
Shockingly, in the Indian Penal Code there are no provisions for
recognition of, leave alone punishment for, specifically a sexual
assault against a minor unless it is rape. In other words, if a minor
is sexually harassed or abused and it does not amount to rape, there
is no specific law at present to deal with the different degrees of
child sexual abuse. This is the most objectionable and outrageous
aspect of our legal system, that in spite of the struggle of women’s
organisations for so many years the government has refused to include
this. Unless it is rape, it is not recognised. If this is not
infirmity, then what is infirmity and sickness?
During the tenure of the Congress government led by P.V. Narasimha
Rao, we met him and pointed out the gaps in the legal system. He
agreed to include an amendment on child sexual abuse. At the last
minute, the government shelved it.
And for the last four years, a comprehensive law that includes all
these aspects has been lying with the government. I moved it in the
Rajya Sabha as a Private Member’s Bill two years ago. The government’s
stock answer is that they are discussing it. This is their permanent
answer.
There have been a few gestures from the Central government in the
aftermath of the verdict, in terms of taking a re-look at the laws
pertaining to women.
The fact of the matter is that the government has a short attention
span as far as issues of women and children are concerned. It is
certainly not considered an important issue on the political agenda. I
would like to take the statements at their face value. If they are
saying they will do it, my question is if they are serious about it,
when do they intend to do so? What is the time frame?
You mentioned in one of your statements that apart from the legal
aspect there was a political dimension in the way the issue was
handled.
Clearly, there are different governments and political parties
involved and there are conflicting statements being made by different
political leaders. Citizens do require to be assured that there is a
sense of accountability in this entire process. It is not just a
question of punishing a politician; that may or may not be possible
under the law. But, certainly, the issue of political accountability
to the people of this State and country is an important aspect, and
also it is equally important so as to prevent political patronage to
those who utilise positions of power for the exploitation of women.
Therefore, we met Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, along with the
victim’s friend’s parents and Jagmati Sangwan, president of the
Haryana unit of the Janwadi Mahila Samiti.
On behalf of AIDWA, we suggested to the Chief Minister that he should
set up an impartial committee consisting of citizens who command
respect in their professions and who have the necessary expertise to
look into the aspects of political patronage to Rathore.
Unfortunately, he was non-committal on this. However, he did say that
officers who had connived with Rathore will be put under the scanner.
That would be good. But at the end of the day, we know that officers
also act according to the direct or indirect support of the political
dispensation of that time.
Some people argue that many institutions, such as the National or
State Commissions for Women and the National Commission for Protection
of Child Rights, have been created, yet there is hardly any
improvement in the overall sensitivity on issues concerning women and
children.
These institutions are there for making policy. They have made some
very important recommendations, which are relevant in the present case
as well. However, governments do not pay sufficient attention or
respect to their recommendations. The issue of women, of children, of
violence and assault against women is not considered as an issue that
is on the political agenda.
Of late, there has been an increase in the manifestation of what we
call public outrage, and it takes a lot of public outrage to evoke
some response from the political system in place.
A lot of public opinion is helped by media coverage. It is not because
of any initiative from official quarters. The government has been
responding mainly because of sustained media coverage. In the post-
Emergency period, the media played an important role in taking up
issues such as bride-burning. But, unfortunately, the efforts of the
media are not sustained. One thing is certain: the helplessness of a
victim. Why should it be that in a civilised society, the victim of a
crime should feel so helpless that she should be forced to commit
suicide? That helplessness and loneliness of the victim, in this case,
too, happened in spite of the courageous efforts of her friend and her
family.
Generally speaking, the helplessness of a victim is something that
should sear the soul of any civilised society because it is such an
all-round failure that we have no social, legal or political support
systems, and sometimes not even the family support system. How do we
deal with this feeling of helplessness? We also need to ask as to what
kind of cultures we need to develop in our approaches, in our public
life, in our public discourse, to stop vilifying the victim, to stop
pointing fingers at the victim. Instead of helping and supporting a
victim, the opposite happens.
If the outrage by the public helps other affected persons to come
forward, it is a positive step. This means that the outrage has to be
expressed when the incident happens and in support of the victim,
rather than sympathy when she has been forced to destroy herself.
Unfortunately, that part is usually left to women’s organisations.
AIDWA had first raised the issue of abetment to suicide, which is now
being considered. Issues of chain snatching are sometimes considered
more important as election issues than that of the increasing violence
against women.
Volume 27 - Issue 02 :: Jan. 16-29, 2010
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20100129270201200.htm
bademiyansubhanallah
In media glare
V. VENKATESAN
It is the media’s steadfast investigation that brought to light
several aspects of Rathore’s high-handedness, which had gone
unreported earlier.
AKHILESH KUMAR
S.P.S. Rathore surrounded by mediapersons outside the court at
Panchkula in Haryana, where he applied for anticipatory bail, on
December 30.
S.P.S. RATHORE’S counsel claimed before the trial court that media
played a negative role in the case and published news items
selectively in collusion with the complainant party. The judge, while
convicting and sentencing Rathore, took note of his grievance that he
felt mental stress because of the media trial. But the judge held that
the court had concern only with the facts and circumstances available
on record and not with what any other agency reported about the
accused or the victim. He also made it clear that Rathore’s grievance
could not be a ground for taking a liberal view on the quantum of
sentence.
This is in line with the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Zee News case
(2003) that judges by their judicial training and the nature of the
office they hold are not expected to be influenced by the broadcast of
a film that an accused apprehended could prejudice the outcome of his
trial.
There has been substantial coverage of the Rathore case in the
national media, both electronic and print, since December 21, when the
trial court delivered its judgment and sentenced Rathore to six
months’ imprisonment and a fine of Rs.1,000. What the trial judge
referred to in his judgment was the period before, during and after
the trial, which lasted more than a decade.
Indeed, the national media were guilty of ignoring this case and its
ramifications all these years. Obviously, whatever little coverage of
the case was there in the local media had no impact on the judge.
Still, the question raised by Rathore cannot be dismissed easily. The
issues it raises need to be discussed objectively to examine whether
the continued dissemination of news and analysis about the Rathore
case in the media constitutes trial by media.
The term “trial by media” is not easy to define. It is a misnomer
insofar as the media does not conduct a trial akin to the one
conducted by courts. However, disproportionate publicity about a crime
in the media may result in innocents being condemned, or the guilty
not getting a fair trial or getting a higher sentence than what they
perhaps deserved.
It is pointed out that if the media carry reports prejudicial to a
person who has been arrested, it affects the right of that person to a
fair trial.
There is genuine concern that any prejudicial publication or broadcast
in the media about a person after his or her arrest may cause
substantial prejudice in the criminal proceedings that must be taken
to be imminent, irrespective of whether the person is released later.
However, it is the media’s steadfast investigation that brought to
light several aspects of Rathore’s high-handedness, which had gone
unreported earlier, let alone be investigated by the police and
prosecuted in a court of law.
The question about the extent of media restraint in the case is
important and needs to be answered in the light of the current legal
position. In a situation where fresh FIRs have been filed against him
and his arrest is imminent, it can be asked whether the media can
continue to cover the cases against Rathore with a perceived prejudice
against him. Section 3 (2) of the Contempt of Court Act, 1971, read
with its explanation, excludes from criminal contempt all publications
made before the filing of a charge sheet or challan in court or before
the issue of summons or warrant, even if such publications interfere
or tend to interfere with the course of justice. Although it is
pointed out that imminent criminal proceedings following the arrest of
a person should be the starting point of restraint by the media, the
law as it stands today favours taking into account the filing of a
charge sheet to consider when the media ought to restrain itself, in
order not to restrict unduly the freedom of expression during the
period from the filing of FIRs and arrest of a person to the filing of
charge sheets.
The Law Commission’s 200th Report (2006) on Trial by Media points out
that in several countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia and
New Zealand, any publication made in the print or broadcast on the
electronic media after a person’s arrest, stating that the person
arrested has previous convictions or that he has confessed to the
crime during investigation or that he is indeed guilty, and the
publication of his photograph are treated as prejudicial and as
violative of due process required for a suspect who has to face a
criminal trial.
The Law Commission observed: “If media exercises an unrestricted or
rather unregulated freedom in publishing information about a criminal
case and prejudices the mind of the public and those who are to
adjudicate on the guilt of the accused and if it projects a suspect or
an accused as if he has already been adjudged guilty well before the
trial in court, there can be serious prejudice to the accused. In
fact, even if ultimately the person is acquitted after the due process
in courts, such an acquittal may not help the accused to rebuild his
lost image in society.”
The Law Commission’s concerns are understandable, but the process of
India’s criminal justice system is lengthy and its many flaws favour
the accused rather than the victim. Therefore, there is a need to
balance the rights of the accused to a fair trial with the rights of
the media and the public to expose these flaws.
There is, however, one aspect on which the media has erred
substantially while covering the Rathore case. They have, with a few
exceptions, ignored Norm 14 of the Press Council of India’s
guidelines, which says: While reporting crimes involving sexual
offences and questions related to a woman’s privacy, the identity of
the victim should not be disclosed.
Volume 27 - Issue 02 :: Jan. 16-29, 2010
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20100129270201400.htm
bademiyansubhanallah
Minor offence?
KIRTI SINGH
The Rathore case highlights how the law views sexual assault as a
trivial crime.
THE molestation case of a minor girl by the former Director General of
Police of Haryana, S.P.S. Rathore, reflects in a microcosm many of the
ills that plague the criminal justice system in our country. The case
highlights the lacunae in both the procedural laws and the substantive
laws relating to sexual assault, particularly of minors. It shows how
an influential accused can manipulate the legal system. Rathore used
his position as a police officer to subvert the law and file false
cases against the girl’s brother and reportedly managed to delay the
case for several years. Finally, even though he was convicted, Rathore
managed to get away with a light sentence, not only because of a
judicial mindset but also because the offence of molestation is
punishable with only up to two years’ imprisonment.
In fact, amendments to laws relating to sexual offences have not been
a priority for successive governments. In spite of repeated
suggestions and demands by the All India Democratic Women’s
Association (AIDWA) and other women’s groups, governments, including
the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, have
refused to amend the century-and-a-half old laws relating to sexual
assaults in the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Women’s organisations and groups have pointed out how the definitions
relating to rape, molestation and ‘eve-teasing’ are flawed and not
reflective of women’s experience of these crimes. They have also
emphasised the urgent need to differentiate between sexual crimes
committed against adult women and those committed against minors. The
National Women’s Commission has reiterated these demands. The Law
Commission has also, in its 172nd report, suggested an overhaul of the
substantive and procedural laws dealing with rape, molestation and
sexual harassment (popularly known as eve-teasing) against women and
children.
The Rathore case highlights how sexual assault is viewed as a trivial
crime not only by the law but by many others, including those in
positions of authority. Rathore was given two promotions and made
Inspector General of Police in 1990 and DGP of Haryana in 1999. The
minor girl was molested about 19 years ago, on August 12, 1990, by
Rathore, the then Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police, in the
office of the Haryana Lawn Tennis Association, of which he was the
president.
It has been reported that the initial trauma, accompanied by the
persistent harassment, led to the girl’s suicide three years after the
crime. It is an acknowledged fact that normally the trauma suffered by
a minor victim of sexual assault is greater than that suffered by a
major. Suggestions have been made in the past that police stations
must be associated with doctors and psychologists, who should counsel
these victims as soon as possible.
The case involving Rathore was registered 10 years after the incident,
after a writ petition was filed in the High Court on the victim’s
behalf by her friend’s mother and after an appeal in the Supreme
Court. The AIDWA and other women’s organisations and groups have, time
and again, complained about the difficulty in registering a first
information report (FIR) owing to gender bias and corruption among
large sections of the police force. They have demanded that non-
registration of an FIR be made an offence.
The Law Commission, in its 83rd report on “Rape and Allied Offences”,
suggested that a new section, 166 A, should be added to the IPC to
make the police accountable for deliberate inaction and disobedience
of law. Therefore, while the Union Home Minister’s reported suggestion
to the police to register FIRs immediately is a welcome first step,
the criminal law will also have to be amended to make the police
culpable.
The case against Rathore was filed under Sections 354 (molestation)
and 509 (harassment) of the IPC. No case was filed against him and the
other police personnel and others for threatening the victim and her
friend and their families. No action was taken against those who filed
false cases against the victim’s brother at Rathore’s instance. These
illegal acts were completely disregarded by the police machinery and
the Haryana government, and no cases were filed against Rathore and
those who acted on his behalf for criminal intimidation, conspiracy
and filing of false charges under Section 211.
While some FIRs have now been filed against Rathore, and the Central
government has made known its intention to fast-track these and other
cases of molestation/sexual assault and amend certain other procedural
sections, these measures by themselves are not enough to ensure
justice to victims of sexual crimes.
It has been argued that for a case of abetment to suicide an intention
to abet the suicide is necessary. The abetment should also be
proximate in time to the suicide. In Gurbachan Singh vs Satpal Singh,
in 1990, the Supreme Court held that persistent ill-treatment of a
woman for dowry amounted to abetment to suicide.
In a case in 1989, the Andhra Pradesh High Court held that “the
cumulative effect of the incidents of harassment spread over the
period after the marriage had to be considered”. Section 107 of the
IPC, Explanation 2, states: “[W]hoever… does anything in order to
facilitate the commission of that act, and thereby facilitate the
commission thereof, is said to aid the doing of that act.”
Under Section 354 of the IPC, molestation is defined as “assault or
criminal force” by a man with an intention to “outrage the modesty of
a woman” or “knowing it to be likely that he will thereby outrage her
modesty”. The crime is cognisable and bailable. The section is
problematic not only because it is couched in archaic and meaningless
language, but also because all forms of sexual assault other than rape
have been included in it.
To ensure that the law relating to child sexual abuse is reflective of
the exact nature and seriousness of the abuse, AIDWA and others have
suggested a number of changes to it. They have suggested that the
provision relating to molestation in Section 354 should be amended to
redefine molestation as unlawful sexual contact and any man who
touches/assaults a woman with a sexual purpose should be liable for
imprisonment up to three years and with fine.
They have also suggested that if a child is molested or forced or
incited to touch the body of any other person, the imprisonment should
extend up to five years along with fine. If the molester is a person
who is in a position of trust or authority towards the minor or is a
person on whom the minor is dependent, the imprisonment should extend
up to seven years. This suggestion should also apply to custodial
molestation.
Definition of rape
It has further been recommended that the definition of rape should be
enlarged to ensure that some of the forms of child sexual abuse are
also considered rape. Such a definition would be in accordance with
international legal standards, including the definition of rape by the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has defined rape in
even broader terms, as being “a physical invasion of a sexual nature,
committed on a person under circumstances which are coercive”.
Apart from these changes, certain procedural amendments are necessary
to ensure justice in cases of child abuse. In Sakshi vs Union of
India, the Supreme Court held that a child’s statement should be
recorded in court without the child having to face the abuser.
Thus, the court held that a videotaped interview of the child’s
statement or the child’s testification behind a screen or via closed-
circuit television should be permitted. It further held that the cross
examination of a minor should only be carried out by a judge based on
written questions from the defence, and that the minor should be given
sufficient breaks as and when required.
The Code of Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Act, 2008, which has still
not been notified, stipulates that a rape victim’s statement to the
police should be recorded by a woman police officer at the victim’s
residence or at a place chosen by her, in the presence of her parents
or guardians or near-relatives or a social worker of the locality. It
further states that the investigation of a child-rape shall be
completed within three months and that the trial and inquiry should be
completed within a period of two months from the date of commencement
of the examination of witnesses. These provisions should extend to all
cases of child sexual abuse. In most cases of child abuse, the child
is not able to express the exact nature of abuse. It is, therefore,
necessary to allow experts such as child psychologists and
paediatricians to depose on behalf of the child.
It has been said that the seriousness with which a judge views a crime
is reflected in the sentence he awards. Rathore was awarded only a six-
month imprisonment, ostensibly because he was old and had been
subjected to a prolonged trial. It is ironic that though the accused
was reported to be mainly responsible for the delay, the court
overlooked this and also the fact that he was not so old that sending
him to prison would serve no purpose. In fact, several previous
judgments show that rapists and those who have sexually abused
children have often got away with fairly light sentences. Apart from a
higher maximum, minimum sentences must be prescribed for these
offences.
Finally, even though several laws now stipulate time limits within
which a case should be tried and the judgment given, these laws are
not followed by large sections of the judiciary. The High Courts and
the Supreme Court will have to ensure that the time limits are adhered
to by censuring errant judges.
Kirti Singh is Legal Convener, All India Democratic Women’s
Association.
Volume 27 - Issue 02 :: Jan. 16-29, 2010
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20100129270201600.htm
bademiyansubhanallah
Who cares?
T.K. RAJALAKSHMI
The implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child leaves
much to be desired after 20 years of its adoption.
ERANGA JAYAWARDENA/AP
An internally displaced Tamil child at a camp at Manik Farm in
Vavuniya, Sri Lanka, on December 23, 2009. In addition to war, new
forms of exploitation have emerged, negating the progress made in the
past century.
ON November 20, 1989, in what was a historic moment, the Convention on
the Rights of the Child (CRC) was adopted and opened for signature,
ratification and accession by a General Assembly Resolution of the
United Nations. It came into force on September 2, 1990, and has since
been ratified by 193 countries except the United States. The United
Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has brought out a special edition of
its “The State of the World’s Children” report on the occasion of 20
years of the CRC which coincides with the worst global financial and
economic crisis since the Great Depression 80 years ago.
Significantly, it calls on governments to seize the opportunity and
put the CRC principles into practice and not to ignore the impact of
the crisis on the poor, and women and children. “The risks to child
rights from the current economic crisis and other challenges from the
external environment must not be underestimated,” it warns. The report
calls for large-scale outlays by governments in procurement and
distribution to maintain levels of immunisation and to provide basic
health care services. Greater commitment and levels of investment than
pre-crisis levels will be required to meet the Millennium Development
Goals, it says.
The report recognises the need for a change in values that respects
child rights, and uses terms such as “social transformation” and
“reconstruction”, which almost everyone had taken for granted in a
global economic scenario in the post-1990s. According to the report,
at the time it was going to press in August 2009, the global economic
outlook remained uncertain despite signs of forward-looking economic
indicators. The full impact on child rights, it says, will only become
apparent as new international estimates of global poverty, child
development and nutrition emerge. “For the crisis not to leave a
legacy of deprivation for generations, the choice has to be to
safeguard, support and, if possible, expand the essential services,
protection and participation that are the right of all children at all
times,” it says. It cautions that declining or inadequate government
expenditure on health and education associated in a period of economic
crisis will transfer the burden of service provision to households and
communities and heighten the already high demands on girls and women.
The report concedes in a sense that greater progress towards the
achievement of the rights of the child could have been made had they
been given top priority. The “profound financial and economic crisis
now engulfing the world may, if nothing else, have opened a debate on
global and economic priorities”, it says. Additionally, in the context
of the impact of climate change on children in developing countries,
it warns that “the old way of operating is no longer applicable… the
world has a unique opportunity to reconstruct itself – and to dedicate
itself afresh to nurturing not only the physical environment but also
its most vulnerable human inhabitants”.
Notwithstanding the report’s prognostications, most governments led by
some of the advanced nations do not appear keen on shedding their old
ways. There are isolated interventions within developing nations, for
instance, in Brazil and China where deliberate measures to
universalise education or even to put in place social protection
systems have been undertaken. But certain developing countries are
still in denial mode. Quoting a research on the prevalence of social
protection schemes in developing countries, the report says that of
144 developing countries surveyed, 19 out of 49 low-income countries
and 49 out of 95 middle-income countries have no social safety net
programmes and only one-third of all countries have some kind of cash
transfers in place. Clearly, the existing systems are woefully
inadequate.
To bolster its argument about the impact of the present economic
turmoil on children, the report cites the example of developing
countries that faced economic shocks in 1997 (the Asian financial
crisis) which led to higher under-five mortality rates, lower school
enrolment and rising insecurity. These were accompanied with
reductions in public expenditure on health and education. The
governments of Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines strengthened
nutritional programmes for children and ensured greater access to
education through scholarships.
Argentina dealt with its 2002 debt crisis differently. Its government
tried to protect the poorest households by providing income support to
their unemployed heads. This lowered the incidence of extreme poverty
across the nation. The popular social protection schemes of Mexico
(Oportunidades) and Brazil (Programa Saude da Family) resulted in
falling infant mortality rates and lower rates of poverty. It is
important to mention here that the change of leadership in Brazil did
have a large role to play in reducing hunger in its population.
While social protection programmes like cash transfers, which were
experimented with in a few countries, have their own merits and
strengths, what is needed are long-term interventions that result in
enhanced investment in the social sector. This will, in turn, generate
employment and sustain the purchasing power of the people. It is not a
coincidence that countries that lack a social protection programme are
those with great income inequalities.
Soaring food and fuel prices too are a matter of concern. This, the
report says, could result in rising poverty and undernutrition
(defined as the outcome of insufficient food intake and repeated
infectious diseases) in developing countries. Domestic food prices in
developing countries are “far above historical levels”, the report
says. There is ample evidence at present from India to show this.
M. KARUNAKARAN
A mother and child selling Santa Claus caps on the eve of Christmas in
Chennai. While children in situations of war or conflict are very
vulnerable to violence and deprivation, the condition of children in
more peaceful situations is no better.
The report recommends supplementation measures such as therapeutic
foods for young children and supportive measures to ensure access to
micronutrients, quality health care and improved monitoring of
nutritional status. However, this is easier said than done. More
importantly, governments will have to be cautious about the kind of
supplemental food and micronutrients that may emerge as solutions from
corporate entities in the guise of dealing with the hunger of Third
World babies and children. These measures, apart from being stopgap
arrangements, deviate from the real issues – that of under-investment
by governments in social protection and nutrition systems.
Real need
What most people in the health and nutrition sector agree broadly is
that governments should first undertake to provide balanced nutrition
to their populations through a universal public distribution system or
otherwise, provide health services through a free and universal health
care system, and provide free and quality education for all. The
report says that an analysis of data from 120 developing countries for
the period 1975-2000 indicates that an increase of 1 per cent in
education spending as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP)
over a 15-year period could lead to universal primary school enrolment
while reducing poverty.
The CRC, which emerged out of the general debate on rights in the post-
Second World War period, has been put to severe test. The report says
that those who were outraged with the treatment of children in 19th
century factories or by their victimisation during the World War would
be equally outraged by the high incidence of child labour, under-five
mortality and undernutrition, high rates of out-of-school children,
use of child soldiers and the phenomenon of child sex workers now.
“Children around the world continue to endure conditions tantamount to
slavery. They are trafficked to other countries and exploited as
forced labour or prostitutes. They are brutalised and victimised as
participants in wars to an extent that allows today’s world no self-
satisfied sense of moral superiority over yesterday’s. They are often
not afforded dignity and worth when they come into conflict with the
law,” states the special edition.
While children in situations of war or conflict are very vulnerable to
violence and deprivation, the condition of children in peace zones or
non-war conditions is no better. The majority of them continue to be
deprived of basic entitlements, thanks to the lack of social
protection systems and the gross underinvestment by their respective
governments. They are treated as second- or third-class citizens as
they happen to belong to the lower-income groups. They are often the
recipients of piecemeal interventions that are aimed more at
satisfying donor or funding agencies than at bringing about a more
qualitative and meaningful change. In effect, what the report seems to
say is that while conceptually there has been a worldwide agreement on
the rights of the child, newer forms of exploitation have emerged
which negate all the progress made in the past one century.
The overall picture is not encouraging in the least. The annual burden
of maternal deaths has remained intractable, says the report, at
around 500,000 since 1990. The bulk of these deaths occur in
developing countries, notably in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
This is accompanied with low birth weight of newborns, which is a
derivative of the mother’s poor nutritional and health status.
Interestingly, many of these regions have got a lot of material aid
from external sources and seen non-government intervention. Even
today, instead of taking on the challenge as a national
responsibility, governments are willing to outsource it to private
entities in the name of private-public partnerships or community
participation. Thus, it is not surprising to see why there has been no
decline in maternal mortality in the past 20 years.
The report says that nearly half of the developing world’s population
lives without basic sanitation facilities. Access to clean drinking
water is a distant dream for many people. Again, in some of these
countries, the income gaps between different sections of people are
stark. There are people who live on less than half a dollar a day when
there are billionaires who make it to international rating lists in
these countries. Two decades after the CRC was adopted, its successful
implementation leaves much to be desired.
Volume 27 - Issue 02 :: Jan. 16-29, 2010
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20100129270208700.htm
bademiyansubhanallah
Law and loopholes
T.K. RAJALAKSHMI
A study finds ambiguities in the law to protect women against domestic
violence and lack of knowledge of the Act among relief providers.
RAJESH KUMAR SINGH/AP
At a rally in Allahabad, a file photograph. The majority of Indian
women are grossly uninformed about how to go about seeking relief
under the law.
ON October 26, 2006, Parliament enacted the Protection of Women from
Domestic Violence Act, not only to recognise the hitherto unrecognised
and latent forms of violence against women in domestic relationships
(in and outside marriage), but also to provide a civil remedy to
ameliorate the conditions of women in such violent relationships. For
the past two years, the Women’s Rights Initiative (an affiliate of the
Lawyers Collective) has been looking at the implementation of the law
and identifying the problem areas, at both the legal and executive
levels. What the third evaluation report, titled “Staying Alive: Third
Monitoring and Evaluation Report 2009 of the Protection of Women from
Domestic Violence Act, 2005”, brings out rather conclusively is that
while it is possible to have a law, it does not automatically mean
that violence against women will come to an end.
The report, jointly prepared by the Women’s Right Initiative and the
International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW), says that judges
have been found to be hesitant to grant ex parte orders even when the
circumstances demand such orders and that the proceedings are almost
never completed within a reasonable time frame. The report also
underscores an important aspect, that of the charge of misuse of the
law. The intent behind this claim, it argues, is primarily to dissuade
women from using the law. “It seems that as the number of women
successfully procuring their rights increases, the louder the cry of
misuse becomes,” the report says.
But definitely, the increase in the number of cases registered under
the Act shows that while women are gradually getting over the
internationalisation of domestic violence, the response from the
agencies providing relief has not been all that encouraging. What is
also surprising is that the evaluation of the Act has been done by a
non-governmental organisation and not any government agency. One
indicator of the government’s seriousness about the issue would have
been its attempt to bring out annual, or even periodical, assessment
reports.
What distinguishes this report from the previous two monitoring
reports is that it presents data on the attitudes of the police, the
judiciary and protection officers towards the Domestic Violence Act
and gender issues. Though the findings as such are not a surprise, it
may not be easy to effect a change in these attitudes without some
kind of mobilisation by women’s organisations.
Many important laws and amendments to existing laws dealing with the
rights of women, including protecting them from the worst forms of
violence, dowry harassment, for example, came about after concerted
struggles by these organisations. The struggle is continuing as there
still seems to be a wide hiatus between the law, the perception about
the law, and the attitudes of the people who have to implement the
law. The Domestic Violence Act remains primarily a civil law, with an
element of criminal law incorporated into it to ensure more effective
implementation. But what the Act provides is more in terms of a
comprehensive definition of domestic violence, incorporating even
sexual abuse within marriage. It remains to be seen how many women
will actually report such abuse; as the report shows even the
protection officers are reluctant to acknowledge such abuse within
marriage.
The law also guarantees a woman’s right to residence by giving it a
clear definition. However, the right to reside does not automatically
translate into a right of ownership to the residential property. This
part, according to the report, has not been understood by the
protection officers and even some of the victims of domestic violence.
Under the Act, the police, the protection officers, the service
providers and the magistrate are required to inform the woman facing
domestic violence about her rights as soon as they receive a
complaint. She can make an application for relief under this Act and
also file a complaint separately under Section 498 A (cruelty within
marriage) of the Indian Penal Code, if the situation so demands.
Interestingly, with the passage of Domestic Violence Act, there has
been a clamour to do away with this section alleging its widespread
misuse.
The report focusses on the knowledge, attitudes and practices of the
judiciary, the protection officers and the police on various aspects
of the law and attempts to understand and explore how these influence
its implementation. What the study also found in the course of
exploring the situation in the three sample States of Delhi,
Maharashtra and Rajasthan was that access to the judiciary was the
most difficult. Interviews with police officers were not without
attendant problems, and in the absence of a comprehensive monitoring
system at the national and State levels, collection of infrastructure
data and court orders was not an easy task. “There is no centralised
depository of data on court orders. The process of requesting for and
obtaining orders from courts is a major challenge,” the report notes.
More importantly, the main thrust of the report is about the attitudes
of the various agencies concerned with providing relief to victims of
domestic violence. What is of concern is that it was not only the
attitude of the police that was found wanting, but also of a sizable
section of the judiciary. A number of magistrates still believe that
the welfare of the family should come before the rights of women. Half
the magistrates present at the training conducted by the Women’s
Rights Initiative subscribed to statements like “for a successful
marriage, sometimes a man needs to discipline his wife” or “too much
fuss is made about domestic violence” or “women in live-in
relationships invite violence upon themselves by entering into
illegitimate relationships”.
In fact, knowledge of the Act itself was found to be wanting as nearly
one-third of the magistrates were confused about whether the woman can
be a respondent or not and whether the wife’s right to reside is valid
only if the shared household is owned by the husband. The experience
with counselling was also not very encouraging. Here, too,
stereotypical notions prevailed as far as role expectations from women
were concerned. The study found that the onus of settlement or keeping
the family together, despite violence, could be imposed on women, and
counselling with this intent could be detrimental and defeat the
purpose for which the law had been enacted.
H. SATISH
A poster campaign in connection with the celebration of Women’s Day in
Hyderabad.
Other ambiguities also persisted. The magistrates, while being aware
that the protection officers were the ones entrusted with the
implementation of the law, were somehow unclear about the role of the
protection officers in the enforcement of the court order. Several
magistrates did not comprehend the role of the police in the event of
the breach of a court order. In the majority of cases, women
approached the police first in a case of domestic violence. In the
training sessions conducted for the police in Delhi and Maharashtra,
the report says that a large number of police officers, despite
accepting that “beating one’s daughter was domestic violence”,
continued to retain archaic notions of domestic violence being a
family affair.
The study found many infrastructural lacunae and cumbersome procedures
regarding the serving of notices by the protection officers. While
protection officers were appointed in all the States, although their
ratio to the number of women varied from State to State, the majority
of the appointments were made at the district level; protection
officers were appointed at the taluk or block levels only in a few
States.
However, the study also maintains that there appears to be no direct
correlation between the numbers of cases filed and protection officers
appointed. Therefore, it is quite possible that in States like
Haryana, which has special cells in the police headquarters of each
district, with specially appointed protection officer-cum-child
marriage prohibition officers, it may not necessarily result in the
reporting of a high percentage of cases of domestic violence. The
report says that the protection officers were found to be burdened
with additional responsibilities. According to the report, NGOs and
service providers said women cannot approach protection officers at
night or on holidays and that these officers never entertained calls,
even for emergency help. The absence of a dedicated budget for
independent protection officers was also construed as a serious
drawback in the Act.
The attitudes of the police, who still remain the most immediate point
of reference for a woman facing domestic violence, are not
encouraging, the report says. A high proportion of police personnel in
Delhi and Rajasthan expressed the opinion that before filing a
complaint a woman should consider its impact on her children. Many of
them even felt that women deserved to be beaten in certain situations
and some 80 per cent believed that domestic violence was a family
affair that could be best resolved by counselling the women. Attitudes
towards the Domestic Violence Act were also a revelation.
Two-thirds of the police personnel interviewed in Rajasthan and one-
third in Delhi felt that the Act was a tool to harass men and their
relatives, and a substantial number of them felt that a woman in an
illicit or live-in relationship should not be covered by the Act. The
women, on the other hand, not only want the violence to stop but want
some action taken against the perpetrator, which does not happen in
the majority of cases. The police, in these two sample States covered
by the study, were found deficient in facilitating women’s access to
the law.
Although discussions and conferences are organised around the
implementation of the Act, the fact remains that the majority of
Indian women are grossly uninformed about how to go about seeking
relief under the law. The knowledge does not come automatically with a
law being in place; it comes with the gradual spread of awareness,
which women’s organisations can accomplish. It cannot be expected of
State governments, the police or the judiciary to change their
attitude just because the law demands that. For example, basic
information about protection officers or on whom to go to when faced
with a situation of domestic violence still eludes many women.
The report does not make any concrete recommendations on amending the
law but suggests that in the next two years, the ICRW and the LCWRI
(Lawyers Collective Women’s Rights Initiative) will track these issues
in order to suggest definite amendments. It also recommends sustained
training of the stakeholders. But this cannot happen in a vacuum; it
needs constant public pressure and strong budgetary support.
The report says that protection officers require institutional and
infrastructural status and the police need directions from the courts
to assist the protection officers in the implementation of the orders,
and, that there is a need for greater coordination between the
stakeholders and the government for a comprehensive system to monitor
and evaluate the implementation of the law.
Volume 27 - Issue 02 :: Jan. 16-29, 2010
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20100129270209200.htm
bademiyansubhanallah
Losing ground
R. UMA MAHESHWARI
Small farmers whose lands were acquired for the Rajiv Gandhi
International Airport face an uncertain future.
PICTURES: UMA MAHESHWARI
Women from Madapally tending the flower beds at the Shamshabad
airport.
ON any given day, as one drives through the well-laid roads leading to
the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Shamshabad, 22 kilometres
from Hyderabad, one is most likely to miss, amid the striking hues of
lavender, orange and white, the bent figures of Padma, Lalita and
others tending the flower beds at the airport complex. Of course,
every once in a while their fluorescent uniforms give them away. These
women once grew flowers and vegetables on the same land as small
farmers.
The land on which the airport terminal, the runway and the thousands
of acres of landscaped extravagance around the complex stand is still
alive in their collective memory as Galvaguda, Anantareddyguda or
Madapally, or Chinna Gollapally – villages that merged to become
Shamshabad airport. Several small farmers gave up their holdings and
their status as farmers for this “larger private good”.
The airport was inaugurated in March 2008. Padma and Lalita are daily
wage labourers on temporary contracts. They work nine to 12 hours a
day and earn Rs.120. Out of this meagre amount they spend Rs.30 each
day on their commute to work.
The Andhra Pradesh government provided 5,400 acres (one acre is 0.4
hectare) of land for the construction of the international airport.
Since the land was found insufficient for the purpose, several
privately owned lands were purchased, mainly in the villages of
Anantareddyguda, Chinna Gollapally and Galvaguda. Gradually, more land
was added to the larger airport complex from other smaller villages.
While some of the owners were pattadars (holders of title deeds),
several others (mainly Dalits and tribal people) were cultivators on
assigned lands. The government arranged for payment of compensation
under a relief and rehabilitation programme for the land, categorised
as A, B and C on the basis of the “strength of the soil”. While most
pattadars managed to get adequate compensation, the status of the
assigned land cultivators continues to be pathetic.
The government had fixed Rs.4 lakh for category ‘A’, Rs.3.5 lakh for
category ‘B’ and Rs.3 lakh for category ‘C’. Those who lost their
homes (that is, the ones who had assigned land) were provided “open
plots” near the HUDA (Hyderabad Urban Development Authority) colony in
Shamshabad under the R&R scheme with a financial package of Rs.55,600
to each household. A special cell was set up under a Special Deputy
Collector (SDC) to oversee the process of acquisition and
compensation, among other formalities.
The land acquisition and development process was completed between
2002 and 2004. As in other cases of displacement, the land acquisition
witnessed popular resentment and protests. Today, many families are
still waiting for compensation. Those who were given 250-square-yard
(202-square-metre) housing plots at what is now called “airport
colony” feel cheated.
The majority of the beneficiaries belong to the Scheduled Castes, the
Scheduled Tribes and the Backward Classes. Their fields were not
compensated for. The roads of their colony are barely eight feet wide.
Water that flows from their community taps has a high fluoride
content, as attested by the Water and Sanitation officials who have
warned them not to drink it. The residents purchase water from local
vendors.
Two of the displaced persons, B. Dayanand and R. Eashwar, filed
complaints with the Upa Lok Ayukta in 2005 regarding “malpractices in
R&R at Shamshabad International Airport” and sought action. The
complaints, submitted with documentary evidence, alleged “misuse” of
power by the SDC, Prabhakar Reddy, in terms of denying the R&R package
to around 25 people (mostly Dalits and members of Backward Classes)
who had lost their lands in the three villages and giving compensation
to undeserving persons. Two cases filed against the official in
connection with the complaints are in progress.
One of the affected persons, Mudedla Jyothy, was apparently denied
compensation on the grounds that she had already been allotted a plot
of land. But the allotment was only on paper. Her compensation cheque
was allegedly encashed by a middleman, who also owns her plot today.
The dejected woman committed suicide, the affidavit dated September 5,
2005, says.
Eligani Pandariah, in his 70s, says: “They took my land – four acres –
but they are yet to give me a plot of land under the R&R package. They
only gave me a certificate [Form D patta certificate], nothing else.
It is very difficult to live in a rented house today, at this age. I
pay a rent of Rs.1,200 for a small room. I have lost my land and
everything to the airport, and I have no place to call my home.”
MOHAMMED YOUSUF
VISITORS GATHER AT the arrival village of the greenfield airport, near
Hyderabad, when it began its operations on March 23, 2008.
Nomula Babiah, another person in his 70s, says: “I had four acres of
[assigned] land, which they took and recorded in their books as three
acres, but only pattadars were given cash compensation for their land.
We got only housing plots. None of the [eligible] people got a job,
which was the promise made when they came to acquire our lands. We do
not have land for agriculture. Life was peaceful when we cultivated
vegetables and flowers on our lands. We used to make about Rs.10,000
to Rs.20,000 a month, and even if we made only Rs.5,000 sometimes we
were all happy. It was our land and our labour. There was always
enough to eat. Today I am living in a rented accommodation. We are not
asking for too much – just the plot that was promised to us. We have
been living off borrowed money since 2005.”
Both Babiah and Pandaraiah figure in the affidavit filed in 2005, but
a decision on this is yet to be taken. Many of them remember fondly
the human rights activist K. Balagopal, whose passing away has brought
the process of adjudication in their cases to a standstill.
Dayanand says: “When we protested in 2002, the big Reddy pattadars
also joined hands, since the talk was about better compensation. But
when that happened and they got their share, they withdrew from the
movement. Most of us who had assigned lands come from poorer
backgrounds. We staged several protests between 2002 and 2004. We
submitted the affidavit in 2005. But we have no energy or resources to
continue fighting as we also need to work for our survival. When we
see the terminal and the runway we are filled with remorse, and
sometimes anger.… Our children have not even been provided jobs in the
airport as a matter of right.”
Around 20 persons from these former villages are now working as
trolley boys and as daily wage labourers, although some of them are
educated. How long they will remain employed depends on the
subcontractors’ whims.
The educated youth have been given employment on an ad hoc basis and
are removed from service on flimsy pretexts. They earn up to Rs.5,000
a month. Initially, women from the colony were employed by contractors
as janitors on 12-hour shifts. These women stopped going for work as
they found the job below their dignity.
Bobbaru Ramulamma (in her 70s) says: “I was there with many other
women when we staged a dharna at the Collector’s office here in 2002.
We raised our voices of protest and fought as long as we could. But
nothing has come out of all that…. Land owners have become labourers….
We have done our bit of fighting, but look at where we have been
thrown out….”
The residents of “airport colony” say Members of the Legislative
Assembly representing the constituency had initially promised support
but later changed their stance.
Dayanand says: “Ninety per cent of our people in the three villages
were agriculturists or agricultural labourers. In fact, we used to
have agricultural labourers from Mahabubnagar working here. Today, our
people are migrating to Mahabubnagar in search of work. We lost our
lands for the airport, at least they should treat us with the respect
we deserve. The drainage system is bad [in the colony]; our children
have no playground; there are no community halls; no parks. We just
have one high school here. Some distance from here, the authorities
are building a 30-40 feet road but we got only narrow lanes. After
much protest and demand, the government allotted a burial ground. But
even that has been taken away for real estate projects. Ultimately, we
do not have even land to bury our dead.”
Both Nomula Babiah (left) and Eligani Pandariah have not been
compensated for the four acres of land acquired from each of them.
Most of the people here bury their dead. They make gravestones for the
departed and leave there things they liked the most when they were
alive. Eashwar’s father’s grave, for instance, always has a stack of
beedis and some water. His father loved to smoke beedis. Eashwar says:
“These sentiments are important for us. But for the developers this is
just a graveyard. They now ask us to give up this graveyard plot,
too.”
In fact, it was a custom in the acquired villages to bury the dead in
their own fields. But after being displaced, the villagers were
allotted a common burial ground. Even the plot meant for the graveyard
was changed twice. “God knows where they will ask us to go now if this
graveyard is closed,” says Eashwar.
Around 600 families affected by the airport project are still picking
up the pieces and continuing to fight, although with less vigour. They
know the fight is against a power they cannot match. They are resigned
to the fact that they need to survive and at least manage to retain
the house plots and get jobs in the airport.
What is worrying is the conditions mentioned in the Form D patta
certificates issued to the displaced people, considering the larger
developments in real estate happening around the “airport colony” and
the HUDA land surrounding it. A new 40-foot-wide road has come up on
the HUDA land, which will eventually connect to the outer ring road.
These developments are happening on the sly. When contacted, a real
estate developer said, they were only “cleaning up” the land and that
nothing was coming up there.
Would this “cleaning up” eventually lead to clearing the housing plots
of the displaced people? Perhaps, because the Form D certificates say
“that the assignee shall have no right of alienation of house site
assign(ed) to her / him”; “that the government may resume the site
without payment of compensation if it is required for any government
or public purpose”; and “that the land shall be resumed, if in the
opinion of the government any of the conditions of the grant has been
contravened if question arises whether there was contravention of any
of the conditions of the grant or not it shall be referred to the
government and their decisions shall be final”.
At the time when the certificates, in English, were issued, few of the
affected people realised the implications of signing off their rights
for a purpose that need not necessarily be called “public good”.
Considering the real estate boom in and around Shamshabad, the
displaced villagers stare at an uncertain future. Yet, some of them
are busy nurturing seasonal flowers, for life has to go on.
Volume 27 - Issue 02 :: Jan. 16-29, 2010
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20100129270209700.htm