Bhopal Gas Tragedy - No Punishment for Fixers ?

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Editor: Nagaraja.M.R.. Vol.10..Issue.45........08/11/2014

 

 

 

Union Carbide and Dow must respect the Indian justice system

 

This year marks the 30th anniversary of one of the world’s worst industrial disasters.

On the midnight of 2 and 3 December 1984, a cloud of toxic gas leaked from the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) factory in Bhopal. It is estimated that more than 22,000 people died as a result, while about 570,000 were exposed to damaging levels of toxic gas. Many people in Bhopal still suffer from serious health problems, and pollution from the abandoned factory site continues to threaten the health of surrounding communities.

Today, three decades later, thousands of survivors and the families of those who died still await justice.

US-based UCC (Union Carbide Corporation) – the majority owner of UCIL - is charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder but has never come to India to face these charges despite various court summons. The US-based Dow Chemical Company, which bought UCC in 2001, has consistently denied any responsibility for the Bhopal disaster or for ensuring that UCC appears before the criminal court.

On 4 August 2014, a Bhopal court issued a third criminal summons to Dow ordering the company to appear before it on 12 November 2014 and explain why it has not produced UCC before the court.

Dow has so far shown complete disregard for the Indian justice system. The United States government has a responsibility to ensure that US companies are held accountable for human rights abuses elsewhere in the world. It must fulfil this responsibility.

Thirty years is too long to wait for justice and remedy.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be meeting US President Barack Obama for a summit meeting at the end of September. Join Amnesty International India in asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi to urge the US Government to help ensure that UCC and Dow respect the Indian criminal process:

* UCC must face the criminal charges against it

* Dow must comply with the summons by the Bhopal court and attend the hearing on 12 November 2014.

 

 

An Appeal  to  Honourable Prime Minister of India & Honourable President of  USA

 

Your Excellency ,

                             I am writing to express my concern about the denial of justice to the thousands of people killed and affected by the toxic gas leak from the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal on the midnight of 2 and 3 December 1984.

 

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster.

 

Over 22,000 people died and around 570,000 were exposed to damaging levels of toxic gas. Many people in Bhopal still suffer from serious health problems, and pollution from the abandoned factory site continues to threaten the health of surrounding communities.

 

On 4 August 2014, a Bhopal court issued another criminal summons to Dow ordering the company to appear before it on 12 November 2014 and explain why it has not produced UCC (Union Carbide Corporation)  before the court.

 

Meanwhile, the injustice continues!

 

I  stand with Amnesty International India in asking the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to urge the US government to ensure that UCC faces criminal charges against it and Dow complies with the summons by the Bhopal CJM’s court and attends the hearing on 12 November 2014.

 

Thank  You & Regards ,

Nagaraja.M.R.

 

30 years after the Bhopal gas tragedy

 

Lessons from India’s greatest industrial disaster with serious consequences for the environment remain unlearnt

Come December, it will be 30 years since the Bhopal gas tragedy occurred. The leakage of the deadly methyl isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) factory in Bhopal went down in history as one of the worst industrial disasters in the world. But after all these years, has anything changed in India with regard to adoption of environmental safeguards before promoting industries and related projects? More important, what is the fate of the victims of polluting industries?

Tragedy continues

According to a January 2013 report of the Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, Lucknow, the soil and groundwater within 3.5 kilometres from the UCC factory site is contaminated with cancer- and birth defect-causing chemicals. “The contamination of soil and groundwater actually predates the disaster,” says activist Satinath Sarangi, who has fought for the cause of gas leak survivors.

“From 1969 to 1977, Union Carbide used to dump its toxic wastes at 21 spots, most of them unlined pits, inside the 68-acre factory premises. Despite 17 agencies, including government and non-governmental organisations, carrying out studies over the past two decades, a comprehensive plan for remediation of the soil and groundwater has not been prepared,” he says.

On Friday, October 31, when the news of Warren Anderson’s death spread across Bhopal, survivors of the tragedy got together to spit on a photograph of the former UCC CEO, the first accused in the case and a fugitive from justice. Survivors are unhappy with the court proceedings and compensation. “While over 25,000 people have died in the disaster, the government has paid compensation for only 5,295 deaths. The government acknowledged in June 2010 that the compensation it accepted from Union Carbide was indeed inadequate. Following this, both the Central and State governments have filed curative petitions in the Supreme Court seeking additional compensation of $1.2 billion,” Mr. Sarangi says.

Rashida Bee, president, Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmachari Sangh, says three generations of gas leak victims have suffered, with their children being born with disabilities but little was done by the government to help victims and to give medical assistance to their families. Through the Chingari Punarvaas Kendra, run by Ms. Bee and her survivor friends, nearly 750 children are now being treated with the money that came with the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2004.

Lessons not learnt

Lessons from the tragedy have not been taken seriously. Environmental activist Nityanand Jayaraman says key lessons such as choosing appropriate sites for projects are violated to this day. “Take the proposed Cheyyur thermal power project in Tamil Nadu, for instance. If the power plant pollutes the land and waterbodies, who will compensate affected local communities?” he asks. “Another example is the Gorakhpur nuclear power project planned in Fatehabad. Located close to dense human habitations, the project has already raised several concerns,” he says.

Disaster response is another important lesson. “In Japan, even small children know how to respond to a disaster such as earthquake, but go to Kudankulam and the local villagers know very little about how to respond to any radiation leak,” he says.

The lack of preparedness in the face of hazardous pollution shows in the case of mercury pollution in Kodaikanal. Mahendra Babu, president, Ponds HLL Ex-Mercury Workers’ Welfare Association, said that in 2001, the Kodaikanal mercury thermometer factory of Hindustan Unilever Ltd. (then Hindustan Lever) shut down, but 36 ex-workers of the factory died from hazardous exposure to mercury. “In the past 10 years, 11 committees, including a Supreme Court-monitored committee, has been set up to redress grievances arising out of the pollution from the factory. No thorough clean-up of the factory site has been done as yet,” he says.

No prosecution

Environmental lawyer and activist T. Mohan says there are hardly any cases of prosecution of environmental crime by corporate firms in India. “In India, ex post facto clearances are being given to projects by polluting firms. Environmental Impact Assessment notifications, which are supposed to be issued prior to the undertaking of projects, are being issued after the projects are executed,” he says. Although the Supreme Court has come down heavily on some instances of violations, government authorities have been quite lax in these matters, he adds.

Mr. Mohan cites the example of the Loss of Ecology Authority (LEA), a tribunal set up to award compensation for farmers affected by polluting industries, to demonstrate how settlement of legal compensation for victims of industrial pollution has not worked out. “The chairman of the LEA resigned a few months ago. The tribunal is rudderless and dysfunctional. Even when compensation was offered to victims of industrial pollution, the sum was paltry. Farmers from Karur in Tamil Nadu were offered as low as Rs. 5-7 a hectare of damaged land,” he says.

With Anderson dead and having escaped imprisonment, Bhopal gas leak victims continue to suffer, Ms. Bee strikes a note of caution. “The new government should think about the consequences of going head over heels to woo industry without paying sufficient attention to the poor institutional response mechanisms in the event of an environmental disaster.”

 

 

India: Court decision requires Dow Chemical to respond to Bhopal gas tragedy

 

US chemical giant The Dow Chemical Company (Dow) must acknowledge its responsibility towards survivors of the devastating Bhopal industrial disaster, Amnesty International said after the company was summonsed to appear before a court in Bhopal, India.

The company has been ordered to explain why its wholly-owned subsidiary, Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), has repeatedly ignored court summons in the ongoing criminal case concerning the 1984 Bhopal disaster, where UCC is accused of “culpable homicide not amounting to murder”.

“Today’s court decision is an important step in ensuring corporate accountability for the devastating consequences of the Bhopal gas leak,” said Audrey Gaughran, Director of Global Issues at Amnesty International.

“Dow has always tried to claim it has nothing to do with UCC’s liability for Bhopal, but the court has today made it clear that Dow itself has a responsibility to ensure that UCC faces the outstanding charges against it. Dow can no longer turn its back on the tens of thousands still suffering in Bhopal.”

Almost three decades after the Bhopal disaster, victims and their families have yet to receive adequate compensation from UCC or the Indian government.

“The summoning of Dow is potentially a giant step towards establishing the criminal liability of Union Carbide Corporation for one of the worst corporate disasters in world history,” Satinath Sarangi, a member of Bhopal Group for Information and Action, a local campaign group, said.

“As 100% owner of Union Carbide, Dow will now have to find a way to explain Union Carbide’s absconding from serious criminal charges for the last 21 years to the Bhopal Court,” said Hazra Bee, a survivor-activist who lives right across from the former Union Carbide plant in Jaiprakash Nagar.

The impacts of Bhopal continue to be felt today. Some 100,000 people continue to suffer from health problems. Ongoing pollution from toxic waste at the former factory site has never been addressed. 

Research conducted by Amnesty International in December 2012 found that, since the gas leak, women in Bhopal have reported ongoing serious health issues including gynaecological and reproductive health disorders.

UCC held a majority share in Union Carbide India Limited, the Indian company that operated the pesticide plant responsible for the 1984 Bhopal gas leak, which it is estimated has killed more than 22,000 people.   

In 1987, the Indian government brought criminal charges of “culpable homicide not amounting to murder” against UCC and its former chairman Warren Anderson. Since then, UCC has repeatedly ignored court summons in India and has yet to face justice for its role in the Bhopal disaster. Anderson escaped trial by simply living abroad. A request by the Indian government for his extradition is still pending with the US government.

Dow has owned UCC since 2001 but has consistently denied responsibility for any UCC liability in relation to Bhopal, ignoring calls by survivors and human rights groups to address the ongoing environmental and health impacts of the disaster. 

Dow has always maintained that it did not own UCC at the time of the disaster and that the two are separate companies. But today’s court ruling means Dow must explain to the Bhopal chief judicial magistrate why it has failed to ensure its subsidiary appears in court.

“Dow’s attempt to distance itself from its wholly-owned subsidiary UCC has always ignored the reality of the relationship between the two companies. Today’s court summons has confirmed that Dow itself must ensure that UCC faces up to its responsibilities,” said Gaughran.

“Dow should publicly recognise this responsibility and address the ongoing human rights impacts in Bhopal. Dow also needs to explain why UCC has failed to show up in court, and to release publicly all information about the gas leak that UCC has withheld previously.”

 

Editorial : BHOPAL GAS  VERDICT FIXED -  Shame Shame to Supreme Court of India & Supreme Court of USA

 

Now it is a known fact that Bhopal  Gas Leak Case Verdict was FIXED years before ,  MATCH FIXED  by then MP Government Chief Minister , Indian Prime Minister and most shame fully Chief Justice of India.

Now The Final Verdict is out in Bhopal Gas Tragedy . This kind of Injustice can only happen in banana republics , where rich crooks are protected by authorities & courts. SHAME SHAME to supreme court of India , supreme court of USA & Government of USA , for practicing double standards in enforcement of law & justice.

 

Double standards of supreme court of India

http://sites.google.com/site/sosevoiceforjustice/is-the-supreme-court-of-india-deaf-dumb-blind

 

PIL Appeal & Show Cause Notice to Supreme Court of India

http://sites.google.com/site/eclarionofdalit/pil-appeal-show-cause-notice-to-supreme-court-of-india 

 

In India, Favorable treatment is given by police & courts of law for rich crooks where as poor innocents are harassed , tortured by the very same police & judges . In india Some MP , MLAs even take money for asking questions in parliament / legislature , Favourable laws are enacted to legalize crimes of rich crooks  for example : Illegal land encroachments by rich crooks. The same MPs , MLAs are not aware about problems of poor public , they don’t even open their mouth for asking questions on welfare of poor , let alone enact laws for welfare of poor. No government law , no decisions of judges , no orders of public servants are sacrosanct . Hereby , e-voice urges the supreme court of india ,

1.       To legally prosecute the jurisdictional  police who changed the charge sheet , who let out  Main criminal Anderson illegally without orders from the  court.

2.       To legally prosecute the SSP , DC of the district , Then Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh & Then Prime Minister of GOI , who fully aided the main accussed , criminal Anderson to escape , to jump law.

3.       To legally prosecute Indian Public Servants , who were responsible for withdrawing the case from US Courts of Justice.

4.       To legally prosecute Then Chief Justice of India Justice Ahmadi & His bench colleagues , who diluted the case by changing the clause under which  Anderson & others were charged.

 

The Public servants – Mps , MLAs , Judges , IAS / IPS officers  , Police  take thousands of rupees monthly salary , cars , bungalows , 5-star hotel stay together with 5-star meal complete with alchoholic drinks , 5-star health care at premium hospitals , business class air travel , foreign tours , etc all at tax payer’s expense. After enjoying to the hilt at taxpayer’s expense  , these same public servants don’t serve the public , they serve the rich crooks , anti nationals in their greed for more money.

 

All the while the same poor tax payer suffers without justice . In India more than 50 Crore people are barely surviving on a single piece meal .Let the corrupt public servants eat their 5-star meals by the side of the graves of Bhopal Gas Victims. Atleast this will open the eyes of honest few in public service – police , judiciary & parliament , it is a fond hope. Jai Hind. Vande Mataram.

 

Your’s sincerely,

Nagaraj.M.R.

 

HANG CORRUPT JUDGES , CORRUPT POLICE , CORRUPT TAX OFFICIALS… TO LAMP POSTS

-         Another independence  struggle in India needed ?

 

After 66 years of india's independence the lives of commoners is far worse than under britishers. The benefits of independence has reached only few , thus creating islands of few ultra rich people surrounded by vast sea of utterly poor. The rich people in nexus with those in power , are getting favourable laws enacted to suit their ends. Those in power are shamelessly enjoying 5-star luxuries  all at tax payer's expense , while more then 50 million are starving to death.

 

The criminalization of politics , executive & judiciary is almost complete. The corruption has spread it's tentacles far & wide , there is corruption from womb to tomb ,from maternity hospital to grave yard. The injustices meated out , the atrocities perpetrated by by public servants are worse than britishers.

 

Ideally in a democracy, the legal recourse of grievance redressal / justice , when a commoner suffers injustice he can appeal to respective government official or police for justice , still if doesn't get justice he can appeal to court of law , further the aggrieved can get the appropriate law enacted through his M.P / M.L.A. The sad part in India is no public servant  is neither aware of the value of our hard won independence or the working of democracy.

 

When all the legal recourses to justice fail to respond , to provide justice to the aggrieved , when corrupt judges-police-politician-public servants act as a criminal nexus & block justice delivery, the commoner has only 2 options , either to suffer in silence or to take law into his own hands & get justice on his own.

 

Take for instance Bombay riots case several VVIPs – cabinet ministers , police were found to be guilty of torture , murders of innocents by justice sri Krishna enquiry commission. The government is sitting over enquiry commission report. The court is not taking suo-motto action in public interests a result , the guilty ministers & police who are fit cases for death sentences are roaming free & commiting more crimes , anti-national activities.

 

In some cases , involving the rich &mighty ,higher police officials , the cover-up begins  right from start ie FIR Registration. Police conduct name sake enquiry , investigation, suppress evidences , witnesses , destroy some of them , the prosecution takes a favourable stand putting up weak arguments. Naturally, the guilty official , minister is acquitted by court for lack of evidences. So, the guilty who should have been rightfully put behind bars , hanged goes scot-free , to commit  more crimes , more anti-national activities.

 

In such cases , if the suffering public give the legal punishment to the guilty , which should have been given by the court but failed. Are not such acts of public, to uphold law & dignity , national security right & patriotic ? if any body terms it as crime , that means guilty VVIPs  , police , public servants should be left unpunished allowing them to commit more crimes , anti-national activities. Is that right from national security angle ? is it equality before law & equitable justice ?

 

Do remember that our freedom fighters ,martyrs ,sri.kudiram bose ,subhash Chandra bose , bhagath singh , veer savarkar others who took violent path of independence struggle & killed inhuman british officers, police & judges  have contributed valuably ,immensely to our freedom struggle. One of the main causes of origin of naxalism ,separatist movements is the rampant corruption & unaccountability of public servants in India.

 

In this back drop , in India anarchy is not far away. The days of suffering public ,killing their tormentors corrupt police , corrupt judges , corrupt tax officials ,etc  is not far away. No police security , no SPG cover can protect those corrupt , as police & SPG personnel work for pay , perks and will be on the wrong side of law – protecting criminals. The suffering public fighting for their survival , on the right side of natural justice , protecting the nation.

 

If the  authorities term this act as illegal , crime then are the acts of corrupt public servants  legal  ? is the cover-up of such corrupt acts by police , vigilance officials & some judges by mis quoting /misinterpreting  , misusing law is right , legal ? the GOI has created , funded , supported , given training , arms & ammunition to various terrorist outfits like LTTE , MUKTHI BAHINI ,MQM in foreign countries , resulting in destruction , mass murders of innocents there . In india itself in assam , Kashmir , the GOI has created counter terrorist outfits to reduce the reach of terrorist groups. The bihar , jharkhand , chattisgarh state governments have created armed gangs SALWA JUDUM to counter naxal outfits , are all these acts of government right , legal ?  the days of dogs death for corrupt is quite nearby. it is high time , to the corrupt to reform , repent themselves.

 

In our own experience, e-voice didn't get justice from authorities in many cases of injustices brought before it , most shameful fact even supreme court of India failed to register PILs , even shameful supreme court of India even failed to give information as per RTI Act , utterly shameful supreme court of India failed to protect the fundamental rights of editor of e-voice  & obstructed him from performing his fundamental duties. Still, e-voice believes in peace , democratic practices. E-voice firmly believes that violence should not be practiced by anybody – neither  state nor public.

 

Hereby, e-voice  urges the corrupt public servants to mend their ways , to uphold law & dignity of democratic institutions. Atrocities , violence , corruption breeds more violence , invites dog's death. Peace ,truth , honesty is the harbinger of prosperous democratic nation. let us build a true democratic India , free of corrupt public servants.

 

Shame! India sold its dead cheap

Shobhan Saxena, 

 

Around 22,000 dead. More than 1,20,000 injured.  Rs 1 lakh for each body. Rs 25,000 for every poisoned lung and damaged heart and blinded eyes. 26 years of long wait. And just 2 years in jail for the men who committed the worst crime against the people of this country. And this mockery of justice after such a long wait. Twenty six years after 40 tonnes of lethal gas seeped into the lungs of Bhopal, families of some 17,000 men, women and children are still waiting for the so-called compensation. Thousands more are still waiting to be accepted as victims. People of Bhopal are still drinking toxic water poisoned by Union Carbide in December 1984. And the main culprit is living life kingsize in a mansion in New York.

 

No country sells its people so cheap.
No country sells its poor so cheap.
No country sells its dead so cheap.

 

Today – on the day of Bhopal disaster judgment -- if there is a failed state in the world, it’s India. It’s not Iraq. It’s not Somalia. It’s not Sudan. It’s India.

 

India – its government, judiciary and corporates – accepted the ridiculous amount of $450 million dollars for the people killed and maimed by methyl isocyanate leaked from the Union Carbide factory in the heart of Bhopal three decades ago. In all these years, the poor victims have done everything they could to get justice and compensation. They have cried and died on streets, sat hungry and faced police lathis on roads and filed court cases in the hope that one day they will get justice.

 

Today, they were denied justice. Today, they were told that they should be happy with the peanuts thrown at them by Union Carbide.  Today, India proved once again that it doesn’t care for its poor. Today, it was proved all over again that those who do politics in the name of poor in this country, always rule for the rich.

 

What justification does CBI have for not being able to produce Warren Anderson in court. The chairman of UC at the time of the gas attack (it was not an accident, the gas leak was caused because of cost-cutting steps taken by him) on the people of Bhopal, Anderson was arrested and later released on bail. He ran off to US in 1986 and we have not been able to find him or ask the US to extradite Anderson to India. Why? The government says it doesn’t know where Anderson is. What a lie. What a shame.

 

Last year, on a balmy July day, a bunch of victims danced on the streets after hearing news that the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal had ordered the CBI to arrest Anderson and produce him before the court without delay. The court also asked the CBI to explain what steps it had taken since 2002 to enforce the warrant and extradition of Anderson, who was declared an absconder in 1992. Though the CBI and US government failed to track Anderson, supporters of Bhopal victims traced him to the elite New York neighbourhood of the Hamptons. In 2003, Greenpeace activists paid Anderson a visit at his home and handed him an arrest warrant.

 

Today’s ridiculous judgment in Bhopal didn’t say anything on Anderson as he is a “proclaimed offender”. This status suits him fine because he doesn’t have to bother about coming to India and answer some very crucial questions:

 

 *Why did Union Carbide not apply the same safety standards at its plant in India as it operated at a sister plant in West Virginia, US?

 

*On the night of the disaster, why did the six safety measures designed to prevent a gas leak fail to function?

 

*Why was the safety siren, intended to alert the people living close to the factory, turned off?

 

The victims have always alleged that Bhopal happened because of negligence by the Union Carbide and that was caused by cost-cutting measures taken by Anderson. Is it because of this reason that Anderson has been 'hiding' in the US?

 

A criminal has a reason to hide, but what reason does our government have to let a mass murderer like Anderson go scot-free. Is it because he is an American? Can an American come to India kill people in this country and run away with no consequences? That seems to be the case. We are still struggling to get a chance to question David Headley Coleman, an American citizen responsible for the worst terror attack on an Indian city in 2008. Will we succeed in getting Headley extradited to India? No way. Never.
 
Today, India proved that it doesn’t really care for its people, particularly if they have been slaughtered by powerful people from the most powerful nation in the world. Instead of taking on America and fighting for justice for its poor, India is more than happy to sell its dead cheap. 

 

Rs 1 lakh for every body. Rs 25,000 for every blinded eye. This is the cost of poor life in a failed state.

 

Bhopal gas tragedy: 8 found guilty, get bail

 

BHOPAL: The seven Indian Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL) officials convicted in the 26-year-old Bhopal gas tragedy case have been granted bail and released on submission of a surety of Rs 25,000 by a trial court in Bhopal, according to a Times Now report.

Earlier on Monday, eight accused, one of whom is deceased, were sentenced to two years in prison for causing death due to negligence.

Reacting to the development, representatives of the tragedy's victims and their families who have been protesting outside the court, said they would approach the Madhya Pradesh High Court to allow the slapping of more stringent charges against all those accused in the case.

The Magistrate court in Bhopal on Monday convicted all eight Indians accused in the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy case. A Rs 500,000 fine has been imposed on UCIL.

Toxic gas leak from a Union Carbide pesticide factory in 1984 killed thousands and left an unspecified number battered with diseases and deformity - the toll of victims is still rising.

Despite Monday's conviction, there is little closure for victims. Legal experts have alleged that there was an attempt to cover up the case. It took the CBI three long years to file a chargesheet that many believed was weak. Then in 1996 the charges were watered down making all sections carry the maximum punishment of 2 years.

The charges were also all bailable and with the prime accused in the case - former Union Carbide (USA) chairman Warren Anderson still on the run and unlikely to present himself in Indian court, there is little hope that justice will be served.

 

Anderson: The man who got away in Bhopal gas case

Chidanand Rajgahtta,

 

Long before British Petroleum, there was Union Carbide; long before David Headley aka Daood Gilani, there was Warren Anderson.

As legal proceedings in the Bhopal gas tragedy meanders on, its torturous path over 26 years a travesty of justice to many, two principals associated with the disaster have faded from sight even as newer culprits in most recent outrages (BP oil spill and Mumbai's 26/11 massacre) are in the spotlight.

Union Carbide, the American chemical company that became notorious for the world's worst industrial disaster, is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Company. And Warren Anderson, Union Carbide CEO, at the time of the disaster and until his retirement in 1986, declared an absconder and a fugitive from justice by an Indian court, lives in relative anonymity and seclusion in Long Island, New York.

Both have washed their hands off the Bhopal disaster. Union Carbide says its officials were not part of this case since the charges were divided long ago into a separate case. "Furthermore, Union Carbide and its officials are not subject to the jurisdiction of the Indian court since they did not have any involvement in the operation of the plant, which was owned and operated by Union Carbide India Ltd, (UCIL)" a spokesman for the company told Wall Street Journal.

The company maintains that the Bhopal plant was designed, owned, operated and managed on a day-to-day basis by UCIL and its employees and all those convicted are the "appropriate people from UCIL — officers and those who actually ran the plant on a daily basis have appeared to face charges."

"I want you to know that Union Carbide continues to have the utmost respect and sympathy for the victims of the tragedy and their families. Union Carbide did all it could to help the victims and their families from Day 1 right up through the settlement with the Indian government," the spokesman added.

Anderson isn't talking. He hasn't spoken on record on the subject for nearly two decades. Now nearing 90, he lives with his wife Lillian in a million-dollar home in the swish Long Island neighbourhood of Bridgehampton, avoiding social contact and hiding from the media and activists who have struggled long to bring him to justice.

When Casey Harrell, a Greenpeace activist, visited his home in 2002 to serve him a warrant, he refused to identify himself and pretended to be someone else.

A neighbour also tried to throw Harrell off-track saying he was someone else and blurting out that he had nothing to do with the Bhopal disaster (even though Harrell hadn't mentioned anything about the disaster).

 

Bhopal gas case: SC shot down move to slap tough charges

Dhananjay Mahapatra ,

 

 

NEW DELHI: It will be unkind to blame the trial court for handing out mild punishments to the Bhopal gas leak accused whose collective negligence caused an industrial catastrophe. For, the court's decision to frame charges against them under Section 304-II of IPC — that attracts a maximum jail term of 10 years — was set aside by the Supreme Court itself on September 13, 1996.

Appearing for CBI, then additional solicitor general Altaf Ahmed had argued before the SC that the accused knew about the potential danger of the lethal gas escaping and hence should be tried under the stringent provision.

"There was ample material produced by the prosecution in support of the chargesheet which indicated that all the accused shared common criminal knowledge about potential danger of escape of the lethal gas — MIC — both on account of the defective plant which was operated under their control and supervision at Bhopal and also on account of the operational shortcomings detected by the Varadarajan expert committee," Ahmed had said in court.

However, a bench comprising then Chief Justice A M Ahmedi and Justice S B Majmudar disagreed. "On our finding that the material pressed in service by the prosecution does not indicate even prima facie that the accused were guilty of an offence of culpable homicide and, therefore, Section 304-II was out of the picture, Section 304-A on this very finding can straightaway get attracted at least prima facie," the bench said. It then quashed the charge framed against the accused under Section 304-II.

As legal experts decried Monday's verdict and activists involved in rehabilitation of the victims termed it a mockery of justice, TOI tracked down Altaf Ahmed in Dubai. Ahmed expressed disappointment, not with the trial court verdict but with the SC's 1996 judgment.

"The dilution of the charges against the accused persons in 1996 by the Supreme Court was very sad and in my perception not justified," he said.

And why did he feel so, when the SC had gone through the evidence and CBI's chargesheet in detail while giving its 40-page judgment? Ahmed felt the apex court had erred by converting the charges from Section 304-II to Section 304A (death caused by a rash and negligent act, under which the BMW hit-and-run accused was tried). "The management of Union Carbide knew that necessary safety measures were not in place and a leak of the kind that resulted in the tragedy was a distinct possibility," he said.

 

 

END 25 YEARS OF INJUSTICE TO PEOPLE OF BHOPAL

 

 Shortly before midnight on 2 December 1984, thousands of tonnes of
deadly chemicals leaked from Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in
Bhopal, central India. Around half a million people were exposed.
Between 7,000 and 10,000 people died in the immediate aftermath and a
further 15,000 over the next 20 years.

Nearly 25 years later, the factory site has not been cleaned up. More
than 100,000 people continue to suffer from ongoing health problems.
Efforts to provide rehabilitation – both medical care and measures to
address the socio-economic effects of the leak – have fallen way short
of what is needed.

Many of those affected are still waiting for adequate compensation and
the full facts of the leak and its impact have never been properly
investigated. No one has ever been held to account for what happened
at Bhopal and efforts by survivors’ organizations to use the Indian
and US court systems to see justice done and gain adequate redress
have so far been unsuccessful.

Bhopal is not just a human rights tragedy from the last century – it
is a human rights travesty today. The legacy of Bhopal persists
because the people of Bhopal have never been able to claim their
rights. Moreover, the negative impacts of the leak are affecting new
generations. Studies have shown how the exposure to the toxic gas
causes long-term effects, which can continue in children born in gas-
exposed families.

For 25 years the Indian government has failed the people of Bhopal.
Promises have been repeatedly broken and no adequate action has ever
been taken to address the impacts of the gas leak.

No company can be allowed to evade responsibility for the impacts of
its operations. Union Carbide must be held to account for what
happened at Bhopal. Dow Chemicals, which now owns Union Carbide, must
cooperate fully with the Indian government and the courts in India to
ensure justice is done and the site is fully cleaned up.

 BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY 1984 -Bhopal, India

 

At the first instance the Government of India failed to ensure that
Union carbide India Limited (U.C.I.L) has installed proper safety
measures and fully implemented it in practice, at it's plant in
Bhopal. The Government of Madhyapradesh through it's labour
department, factory inspectorate & pollution control board failed to
enforce safety practices & environmental protection. In turn, the
U.C.I.L didn't install in full, the safety measures being followed by
it's parent company union carbide corporation (U.C.C) at it's
Various plants in the U.S.A. The U.C.I.L. didn't give community
training to residents of nearby localities, to cope up with
emergencies ie. Industrial accidents. U.C.I.L gave a go - by to safety
practices, as it treated Indian lives as cheap. The government of
Madhya pradesh instead of shifting slum dwellers around U.C.I.L, to
other safe place, gave them legal title deeds just months before the
tragedy in 1984.

Now, refer the following:-

1. After the accident at it's U.C.I.L. plant at Bhopal, India in 1984,
when the U.C.C.  Chairman/C.E.O. came over to Bhopal from U.S.A to
visit the accident site, local police arrested him on the charges of
manslaughter. However, the Government of India got him released.

2. In 1985, Government of India enacted "Bhopal claims Act" took- away
the right of appeal of all the Gas tragedy victims & declared itself
as the sole representative of all victims. This said act itself is
violative of victim's fundamental & human rights. The
victims didn't choose Government of India as it's representative under
will, agreement, trust or pleasure.

3. The paradox of this "Bhopal claims Act" is that, Government of
India which is also a party to the crime, tragedy, itself is the
appellant. The appellant (Petitioner),defendant are Government of
India, Prosecution by Government of India & Judged by Government of
India.

4. In 1989, when an appeal about interim compensation to be paid by
the U.C.I.L to all the victims was being heard in the apex court, the
supreme court of India without giving a chance to the victims to make
their point, without consulting them, without making a proper
assessment of damages/losses, gave an arbitrary figure as verdict &
dropped all civil, criminal proceedings against U.C.C.&U.C.I.L

5. In the same year 1989, the Government of India without consulting
the victims of disaster, without making proper assessment of damages/
losses, negotiated a settlement with the U.C.C. and in turn gave full
legal immunity to U.C.C.& U.C.I.L from civil &
Criminal proceedings

6. Even the Government of India didn't present the case of victim's-
gas tragedy victims, properly before the U.S.courts, where the U.C.C
is based. All these premeditated acts only benefited the criminals-
U.C.C&UCIL. Are not the supreme court of India & Government of India,
here to safeguard Indians and to safeguard Justice?

After all these crimes, the Government of India failed to distribute
compensation in time to victims. It has failed even to provide safe
drinking water to the residents near the accident site, It has failed
to provide comprehensive medical care to the victims, till
date . It has even failed to get the accident site cleared off toxic
wastes either by the culprit management or by it self, that too after
20 years. The very presence of these toxic wastes since 20 years is
further contaminating, polluting the environment and taking toll of
more victims.

Particularly in the case of "Bhopal Gas Tragedy" the supreme court of
India & Government of India are deadlier criminals than U.C.I.L&U.C.C.

Just consider a case here, Just a few years back an U.S.based M.N.C
ENRON set-up a power project in Maharashtra, India through it's
subsidiary. When Maharashtra state Electricity Board failed to lift
power from Enron& pay them monthly guaranteed revenue, Enron
threatened to invoke, open the "Eschrew Clause" with the Government
of India & to approach international arbiter U.K. Government of India
has stood as conter-guarantee in this case. Finally the Government
paid, of course subsequently the parent ENRON collapsed due to other
reasons. If in this case if Government of India failed to pay-up as a
counter guarantee & refused to comply with the award of International
arbiter, definitely Government of U.S.A. would have stepped into the
scene to protect it's MNC. Hypothetically, In the same vein if Enron
has caused damages to Indians either through negligence of safe
practices or industrial accidents or bank frauds
amounting over and above it's Capital base & insurance cover, then it
would have been the duty of parent Enron & Government of U.S.A. to
step in & pay-up.

In the same way, the U.C.I.L has caused massive damages to Indians &
refusing to pay commensurate to damages. Dow chemicals which took-
over U.C.C. is also refusing to pay. DOW chemicals which is the new
owner of U.C.C. naturally inherits both profits, credits lent &
liabilities to pay of U.C.C. Still it is refusing to pay. Now it is
the turn of Government of U.S.A. to cough-up the sum.

Nowadays, it has become routine for central & State ministers to go-
on foreign jaunts, to globe -trott inviting F.D.I/ M.N.Cs to India.
They do sign numerous agreements, only favouring MNC. When tragedies
occur or when they cheat Indian banks/ investors, it is Indians who
suffer. The ministers & bureaucrats thinks themselves as wizards and
enters into agreements with MNCs, industrialists in a hush-hush
manner, with vast scope for possible corruption. Is it not the duty of
government to be transparent ?
 
An appeal to honourable supreme court of USA & HE Honourable president
of USA  Mr.Obama
 
Your government protects all Americans, all American companies both
inside America & abroad. If an American tourist is murdered in a third
country , American investigators fly over to that country  to conduct
investigation in total disregard to local laws. In the same way , if
the interests of an American company is threatened in a third country
American government goes to it's rescue.
 
However , when an American company butchers , causes mass man
slaughter in a third country , as an American company did in Bhopal
India , no action by American government. Still the said American
company has not removed , cleared the accident site of poisonous
debris at Bhopal India since decades and still causing mass man
slaughter  , no action by American government  why ?
 
Some US based companies are selling soft drinks , food products ,
medicines , drugs in third world countries , which are causing grave
health damages to the public. The quality standards of these products
are fit cases of rejections by US FDA. Some US companies are selling
drugs ( which are banned in the USA ) to third world countries , still
us companies are exporting such dangerous medicines , foods to third
countries . no action by US government , why ? is it because you think
that the lives of  non Americans are cheaper than Americans ?
 
Hereby, I do request your kindself ,
 
1 . to initiate criminal prosecution against US based key management
personnel responsible for Bhopal gas tragedy .
 
2 . to make either the respective company management or US government
to pay compensation to victims of Bhopal gas tragedy  on par with
American lives , as if the same tragedy happened in the USA itself.
 
3 . to order the management of the said company to clean up Bhopal off
poisonous debris , from the accident site at their own expense.
 
4 . To legally prosecute US exporters &  US based companies selling
products  ( which violates US FDA regulations or banned in the USA for
domestic consumption ) to third countries.

 

WHY MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES ARE INVESTING IN INDIA?

 

We condemn the brutal massacre by police on farmers – who are going to loss all their lands , sources.of livelihood for the sake of special economic zones , industrial parks , etc in various states of India.

 

In every mega projects undertaken by government , both the state government & central government have functioned  like  REAL ESTATE / COMMISSION  AGENTS for the rich & mighty . the government says it is acquiring lands for development of industries , for public good. In reality there is only good of rich & mighty.

 

For forming S.E.Zs , corporates gets speedy single window approvals from government , lands at concessional rates – lower than market value  , soft loans from Indian banks , tax exemptions for years from the government , dedicated power supply , etc , from the government . these corporates are even given free hand to raise share capital in the Indian market. the government has enacted flexible labour laws specifically for S.E.Zs , they can hire & fire without bothering to pay gratuity , etc and they are exempted from providing P.F / E.S.I  coverage to their employees ie they need not worry about the occupational health hazards of their employees , they can employ them till they are fit & throw them on streets afterwards. These corporates take our own money,  employ our own people , use our own natural resources & finally  take away the net profits to their home countries  – what they give back ? – environmental pollution , tax evasions , low paid occupational hazardous jobs to locals , stock market scams .

 

During Previous License Regime foreign, investment was not directly welcome in India. As people at that time perceived it as "Neo colonisation" & detested it. There were various restrictions on foreign investments. The local industrialists under monopolistic
environment thrived, who were no way better than day light robberers, of course with a few exception. Under the political patronage, the cunning industrialists looted public money, cheated the government of tax, cheated lending banks & cheated the investors
too. They easily flouted labour laws & made labourers to work in inhuman conditions.

During 1990's under the international pressure India signed GATT & slowly started opening it's economy. Now, from 01/01/05 even product patent has come into force in India. Are MNCs bringing high technology intensive industries to India? No, not at all. They are actually denying sophisticated technologies to India. They are only
bringing the FMCG industries - salt, chips, ketch-up, colas, for which India is a huge home market. They are into services like Hotels, medical care, marketing. In other cases, they are just marketing the products manufactured at their bases in U.S.A. or Europe.

 

They are not bringing in new production technologies in the areas like space research, nuclear energy, bio-technology, pharmaceuticals or pollution control, to India. Also, some MNCs are relocating their highly polluting industries to India, as they are subjected to stringent environmental protection standards in their own home countries. Whereas, In India the Government is highly corrupt & can be bought for a price. The attractive points for foreign direct investment (FDI) in India are,

1. There is lack of comprehensive environmental norms.

2. The enforcement of environmental norms is lax.

3. The cost of health coverage, social security net to be provided to the workers exposed to the occupational hazards is less.

4. The cost of compensation to be paid to the persons-who died or suffered damages due to occupational hazards/environmental pollution is meager.

5. The enforcement of labour laws are lax.

6. Public money can be easily raised through lending Banks, primary market within India & the public can be easily cheated.

7. The tax can be evaded through various loopholes like transferring money to holding companies situated at Mauritius or countries which have double taxation avoidance agreement with India.

8. The tax can be evaded, company money can be cheated by lending money to sister / holding concerns at low interest rates or by selling shares, materials to their private companies at low rates or by buying shares, materials from their holding/sister concerns at exhorbitant rates, etc.

9. The corporate governance laws are almost absent in India & it's enforcement nil.

10. Above all, the time can be bought by very slow Indian legal system, if any dispute arise.

11. On top of it, well trained, technically qualified people are available at low rates through contractors.

Just consider the following cases which highlight the apathy, irresponsibility of  government of India and emboldened the cunning, MNCs:-

1. The India which boasts of so much scientific/technological advancements, is till date has been unable to provide potable water to it's people. People of west Bengal , Karnataka , Andrapradesh states are forced to drink Arsenic, Fluoride poisoned water.

2. The people living near the mines of R.E.M.P. in Kerala are suffering due to exposure to the radio active materials, Same is the case with the people of Jadaguda, Jharkhand, living near the U.C.I.L. plant. Both M/S R.E.M.P & M/s U.C.I.L are department of atomic energy enterprises.

3. Few years back, In Mysore railway station containers of radio- active materials were left unattended. The dome of reactor building at construction stage collapsed in nuclear power plant at Kaiga. A fire tragedy occurred in Kakrapar nuclear power plant. In the recent Tsunami waves onslaught, certain important facilities of Koodakulam atomic plant were damaged near Chennai.

4. In 1984, U.S. based MNC union carbide mass murdered nearly 20,000 people, injured lakhs who are still suffering health problems. The polluted poisonous accident site i.e. Union carbide plant in Bhopal is not yet cleared off toxic materials even after 20 years.
This is still further damaging the residents of Bhopal.

5. In the above union carbide disaster, the Government of India didn't present the case properly before supreme courts of India & U.S.A.. As a result the MNC just paid a pittance as compensation. As per that the cost of Indian lives are just a fraction of cost of
American lives. Just imagine if a same disaster occurred in U.S.A. at the plant of a MNC headquartered in India, what would have been the consequence?

6. In India, hazardous chemicals laced with food additives are passed through the drinks, beverages like pepsi, cola, coco cola very easily.

7. The medicines like nimesulide, paracetamol, etc. with hazardous side effects which are banned in U.S.A.& Europe, are easily marketed by the same U.S.& Europe based MNCs in India.

8. In India spurious drugs, medicines, food stuffs are easily marketed.

9. In India, the clinical trials of new medicines under research are done without proper compensation structure to those being tried upon ie. Virtual guinea pigs.

10. In India, the genetically engineered BT crops are being introduced without paying attention to formers, ecology or eco-system.

11. In India, during setting up of large projects, scant attention is paid to environment, eco-system & the displaced persons.

Most of the times, in government projects itself the displaced persons are cheated by the government in numerous ways.

12. In India, various Government as well as private hospitals dumps hospital wastes with deadly viruses in the open, with scant regard to public health.

13. In India, aged ships belonging to foreign countries are breaked down to scrap in ship breaking yards of Gujarath , Maharashtra & AP. Various toxins like the Asbestos, lead, etc & the hazardous, dirty water, Oil inside the ship are drained into Indian seashore. The labourers here are forced to work without any safety gears.

14. When specific cases of human rights violations were brought before the government & Judiciary by us , both of them didn't respond at all.

All the above cases highlight the fact that, government of India & Indian judiciary treats it's citizens lives as cheap, dispensable at will. This is the major attracting force for MNCs to India.

 

 BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY 1984 -Bhopal, India

At the first instance the Government of India failed to ensure that Union carbide India Limited (U.C.I.L) has installed proper safety measures and fully implemented it in practice, at it's plant in Bhopal. The Government of Madhyapradesh through it's labour
department, factory inspectorate & pollution control board failed to enforce safety practices & environmental protection. In turn, the U.C.I.L didn't install in full, the safety measures being followed by it's parent company union carbide corporation (U.C.C) at it's
Various plants in the U.S.A. The U.C.I.L. didn't give community training to residents of nearby localities, to cope up with emergencies ie. Industrial accidents. U.C.I.L gave a go - by to safety practices, as it treated Indian lives as cheap. The government of Madhya pradesh instead of shifting slum dwellers around U.C.I.L, to other safe place, gave them legal title deeds just months before the tragedy in 1984.

Now, refer the following:-

1. After the accident at it's U.C.I.L. plant at Bhopal, India in 1984, when the U.C.C.  Chairman/C.E.O. came over to Bhopal from U.S.A to visit the accident site, local police arrested him on the charges of manslaughter. However, the Government of India got him released.

2. In 1985, Government of India enacted "Bhopal claims Act" took- away the right of appeal of all the Gas tragedy victims & declared itself as the sole representative of all victims. This said act itself is violative of victim's fundamental & human rights. The
victims didn't choose Government of India as it's representative under will, agreement, trust or pleasure.

3. The paradox of this "Bhopal claims Act" is that, Government of India which is also a party to the crime, tragedy, itself is the appellant. The appellant (Petitioner),defendant are Government of India, Prosecution by Government of India & Judged by Government of
India.

4. In 1989, when an appeal about interim compensation to be paid by the U.C.I.L to all the victims was being heard in the apex court, the supreme court of India without giving a chance to the victims to make their point, without consulting them, without making a proper assessment of damages/losses, gave an arbitrary figure as verdict & dropped all civil, criminal proceedings against U.C.C.&U.C.I.L

5. In the same year 1989, the Government of India without consulting the victims of disaster, without making proper assessment of damages/ losses, negotiated a settlement with the U.C.C. and in turn gave full legal immunity to U.C.C.& U.C.I.L from civil &
Criminal proceedings

6. Even the Government of India didn't present the case of victim's-gas tragedy victims, properly before the U.S.courts, where the U.C.C is based. All these premeditated acts only benefited the criminals- U.C.C&UCIL. Are not the supreme court of India & Government of India, here to safeguard Indians and to safeguard Justice?

After all these crimes, the Government of India failed to distribute compensation in time to victims. It has failed even to provide safe drinking water to the residents near the accident site, It has failed to provide comprehensive medical care to the victims, till
date . It has even failed to get the accident site cleared off toxic wastes either by the culprit management or by it self, that too after 20 years. The very presence of these toxic wastes since 20 years is further contaminating, polluting the environment and taking toll of more victims.

Particularly in the case of "Bhopal Gas Tragedy" the supreme court of India & Government of India are deadlier criminals than U.C.I.L&U.C.C.

Just consider a case here, Just a few years back an U.S.based M.N.C ENRON set-up a power project in Maharashtra, India through it's subsidiary. When Maharashtra state Electricity Board failed to lift power from Enron& pay them monthly guaranteed revenue, Enron threatened to invoke, open the "Eschrew Clause" with the Government
of India & to approach international arbiter U.K. Government of India has stood as conter-guarantee in this case. Finally the Government paid, of course subsequently the parent ENRON collapsed due to other reasons. If in this case if Government of India failed to pay-up as a counter guarantee & refused to comply with the award of International arbiter, definitely Government of U.S.A. would have stepped into the scene to protect it's MNC. Hypothetically, In the same vein if Enron has caused damages to Indians either through negligence of safe practices or industrial accidents or bank frauds
amounting over and above it's Capital base & insurance cover, then it would have been the duty of parent Enron & Government of U.S.A. to step in & pay-up.

In the same way, the U.C.I.L has caused massive damages to Indians & refusing to pay commensurate to damages. Dow chemicals which took- over U.C.C. is also refusing to pay. DOW chemicals which is the new owner of U.C.C. naturally inherits both profits, credits lent & liabilities to pay of U.C.C. Still it is refusing to pay. Now it is the turn of Government of U.S.A. to cough-up the sum.

Nowadays, it has become routine for central & State ministers to go- on foreign jaunts, to globe -trott inviting F.D.I/ M.N.Cs to India. They do sign numerous agreements, only favouring MNC. When tragedies occur or when they cheat Indian banks/ investors, it is Indians who suffer. The ministers & bureaucrats thinks themselves as wizards and enters into agreements with MNCs, industrialists in a hush-hush manner, with vast scope for possible corruption. Is it not the duty of government to be transparent ?

 

Bhopal gas case: ex-CBI men, Moily fight verbal war as Warren Anderson goes scot-free

 

New Delhi: Bhopal gas tragedy prime accused Warren Anderson’s failed extradition has kicked off a war of words between former CBI investigators and the law minister.

You may also want to see

• India trying for Anderson's extradition: Pranab Mukherjee
• Set up independent probe on Bhopal, ministerial group will not do: CPI(M)
• Bhopal gas tragedy: Justice Ahmadi refuses to join the blame game
• BJP for JPC probe into 'misuse' of CBI
• BJP demands Anderson escape order from Congress

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• Amendment in law to prevent Bhopal like tragedy: Solicitor general
• BJP seeks withdrawal of nuclear liability bill
• Bhopal gas leak tragedy convicts released on bail

Complete Coverage

The Bhopal Gas Tragedy

Officers who probed the case but have now retired claim their hands were tied by government missives directing CBI not to pursue Anderson’s extradition.

In fact, the government had committed to the US that Anderson would not be arrested during his visit to Bhopal in the aftermath of the tragedy. Accordingly, he was allowed to return.

Former CBI joint director BR Lall, who briefly investigated the case, recalls receiving a letter from the ministry of external affairs to not pursue Anderson’s extradition.

“I distinctly remember receiving a routine letter which said Warren Anderson’s extradition may not be pursued. Normally, directions are not received through letters. It was a rare case,” he told DNA, making a case for greater autonomy to CBI.

“We [CBI] had responded to the letter that investigations required [Anderson’s] extradition,” Lall said.
His boss, former CBI jointdirector Joginder Singh, said there was little the agency could have done.

“CBI did its best to investigate the case fairly and push for Anderson’s extradition. But our hands were tied. In 1996, we got a major blow when the Supreme Court deleted criminal sections from the case.”

The CBI charge sheet mentioned section 304 IPC (culpable homicide with a maximum punishment of 10 years). However, the charges were watered down to 304 (a) (death due to negligence), usually used in cases of road accidents.

“With such a mild section, it is impossible to get an extradition anywhere. The moment 304 was quashed, half the case was lost,” Singh said.

Law minister Veerappa Moily refuted the allegations. Reacting sharply to Lall’s claims, he said, “After retirement people can give many statements. It is an irresponsible statement. This is not done at all. I think we need to do something to deal with such people who fail to discharge their duty and after retirement, try to become heroes or martyrs of the situation.”

 

New Delhi: A former senior CBI official, involved in the Bhopal gas leak case investigations, today claimed that the probe was "influenced", generating a strong reaction from law minister M Veerappa Moily who termed the remarks as "irresponsible."

You may also want to see

• India trying for Anderson's extradition: Pranab Mukherjee
• Set up independent probe on Bhopal, ministerial group will not do: CPI(M)
• Bhopal gas tragedy: Justice Ahmadi refuses to join the blame game
• BJP for JPC probe into 'misuse' of CBI
• BJP demands Anderson escape order from Congress

Related videos

• Amendment in law to prevent Bhopal like tragedy: Solicitor general
• BJP seeks withdrawal of nuclear liability bill
• Bhopal gas leak tragedy convicts released on bail

Complete Coverage

The Bhopal Gas Tragedy

The officer, BR Lall, former joint director of the agency and in-charge of the probe also said he was forced by the ministry of external affairs officials not to follow extradition of Warren Anderson, the CEO of Union Carbide Corporation when the gas leak took place 26 years ago.

"CBI investigation was influenced and commanded by some officials, as a result the justice in the Bhopal Gas leakage case got delayed, hence, denied," said Lall, the CBI officer in charge of the investigation from April 1994 to July 1995.

However, Moily, while reacting to Lall's claim said, "After retirement, people can give many statement. It is an irresponsible statement. This is not done at all. After retirement, people become martyrs by making such statements."

Claiming that CBI was an "under command" organisation, Lall said, "We need to make it free from government control to
ensure transparency and fair probe. In other countries, all chief investigating agencies have been given autonomy by keeping it out of the control of the judiciary, bureaucracy and executive powers."

The charges by Lall came hours after a local court in Bhopal yesterday convicted former Union Carbide, India, chairman Keshub Mahindra and seven others for the world's worst industrial disaster, that left more than 15,000 dead on the intervening night of December 2-3 in 1984.

"I was told by the ministry of external affairs officials not to follow the extradition of Warren Anderson, which affected the CBI probe," Lall, who is now retired, further claimed.

After registering a case, CBI had filed its chargesheet under Section 304 IPC, which amounts to culpable homicide with maximum punishment of 10 years. However, the charges were later watered down to 304 (a), usually used in road accidents.

"I do not know what circumstances and evidences forced CBI or others involved in the proceedings to lower the section," he said.

However, MEA sources maintained that "in 2003, a request for extradition of Anderson was made to the US side under India-US bilateral extradition treaty. This request has already been reiterated on more than one occasion."

Anderson, 89, the then chairman of Union Carbide Corporation of USA, who lives in the United States, appeared to have gone scot-free for the present as he is still an absconder and did not subject himself to trial. There was no word about him in the judgement of the Bhopal court.

 

Anderson flew in, out of Bhopal in state govt's plane: Capt SH Ali

 

New Delhi: Claims that Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson had flown in and out of Bhopal in a state government plane was today strengthened by the aircraft's pilot.

''We got flight information from the then Director of Aviation R S Sodhi for a flight from Bhopal to Delhi and were told to keep the aircraft, a state government plane, ready,'' Captain Syed Hasan Ali claimed in an interview to a news channel.

Bhopal Gas: Centre reconstitutes GoM, MP govt to file appeal

He added that Anderson's identity was kept a secret from him. ''We did not know who he was,'' he said.

Capt Ali further claimed that Anderson was alone in the aircraft and looked upset and tired. ''As we waited for him, he came with the then SP and the District Magistrate of Bhopal. When we landed in Delhi, an ambassador picked him up from next to the plane and I left him with the airport manager,'' he claimed.

Anderson case not closed, he slipped because of CBI: Moily

Capt Sodhi, seconding the pilot's claims, said it was on orders of Arjun Singh government that Anderson was allowed to fly.

''I had received a call from the office of the then Chief Minister, Arjun Singh, ordering to arrange Anderson's departure on December 7, 1984,'' Captain R S Sodhi claimed in an interview to a news channel today.

Eight held guilty for Bhopal gas tragedy, get two years in jail

He alleged Anderson, a few hours after he came to know about his charges with culpable homicide, reached the airport where the Chief Minister's official plane stood waiting for him, along with senior bureaucrats and police officers.

The city's Superintendent of Police and the district magistrate, Moti Singh, waved to Anderson as he boarded Singh's plane, he said. Earlier, Moti Singh had also alleged that the then Chief Secretary of the state had called him to his room and told him to arrange for the flight of Anderson out of Bhopal.

''The then chairman Keshub Mahindra and UCIL's then managing director Vijay Gokhale after landing in Bhopal were taken into custody at the airport itself but soon after that, he and the district police chief were told by the Chief Secretary to get the US citizen released on bail and send him to Delhi by plane,'' he said.

 

 Bhopal gas tragedy : 'Rajiv Gandhi' helped Warren Anderson escape?

 

Courtesy : CNN-IBN. Warren Anderson, former chairman of the American parent company Union Carbide Corp responsible for the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, got out of India on the government’s order. Moti Singh, who was the District Collector of Bhopal at the time of gas leak from the Union Carbide plant, said this to CNN-IBN on Wednesday. He alleged Brahm Swaroop, Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh at the time, called him and the Superintendent of Police (SP) personally and asked him to release Anderson. Anderson was arrested on December 7 but he was released the same day and flew out of Bhopal in a state government plane to New Delhi, said Singh. SeveralUnion Carbide officials were arrested on December 7 and kept at the company guesthouse after the gas leak on December 1, which was declared a temporary police station. "At around 2 pm in the afternoon the Chief Secretary summoned me to his chamber in the Secretariat. We went there -- he (Chief Secretary) said Mr Anderson was to be released and sent to Delhi by plane which was awaiting him at the airport. We did legal formalities and Anderson was released on bail. He was put on the plane and he went to Delhi,” said Singh. The former official said he was never given reasons why Anderson was being released. Singh claimed Anderson wanted to visited areas affected by the gas leak but he was told there was a threat to his life. "He was reluctant to leave immediately. He said he wanted to see the affected areas and meet the people. I told him he was not welcome in Bhopal and that there was risk to his life and in no case he could be allowed to go to the affected areas.” The former district collector claimed Anderson seemed casual and showed “symptoms of arrogance” but toned down when he was told that he was being released. Singh recalls Anderson briefed him on how the deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas "leaks, how it works” and what wind direction it will take. Singh says Anderson’s information tallied with what was happening in the city. Anderson was charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, grievous assault and killing and poisoning human beings and animals due to leakage of the MIC gas from theUnion Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal. A Bhopal trial court on Monday convicted eight Indian officials of Union Carbide for their criminal negligence that triggered the world's worst industrial disaster, but Anderson was not mentioned in the judgment. Law Minister Veerappa Moily on Tuesday told CNN-IBN the “case” against Anderson was not closed and blamed a former Central Bureau of Investigation officer, who had investigated the gas leak, of not pressing for the American’s extradition. Date : June 9th, 2010. News by Newsofap.com

 

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Bhopal gas tragedy : Warren Anderson released after deleting a 'charge'

 

Three days after the Bhopal gas tragedy, the police here had released the then Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson and two others on bail by "deleting" in the complaint a stringent charge under the IPC against them, trial court sources said today.

A perusal of court documents shows that the in-charge of the Hanuman Ganj Police Station, Surender Singh, had initially arrested Anderson, then UCIL chairman Keshub Mahindra and senior company official Vijay Prakash Gokhale at 10.10 AM on December 7,1984 in the presence of one Rakesh Kumar under various sections of IPC including 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder).

They were also charged with sections 304 A (causing death by negligence), 278 (making atmosphere noxious to health), 284 (negligent conduct with respect to poisonous substance), 426 (mischief) and 429 (mischief by killing or maiming cattle, other animals).

Later, the police released the three, "deleting" the charge against them under Section 304, they said.

The sources said that police had no right to delete such a charge and in doing so they had exceeded their brief.

"If the charge had not been deleted, Anderson may not have been able to leave India," they said.

The CBI had later booked Mahindra and Gokhale under Section 304 which provides for prison term of 10 years. However, the Supreme Court had dropped the stringent section in the case.

Over 15,000 people were killed and thousands of others maimed when the deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984.

Date : June 11th, 2010. News by Newsofap.com

 

Bhopal gas tragedy: Justice Ahmadi offers resignation

 

Bhopal: Former Supreme Court Chief Justice AH Ahmadi, facing flak for the 1996 verdict in the Bhopal gas tragedy case, has offered to resign from the post of Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust chairman.

Speaking to a daily, the former CJI said, “I will send a fresh application to the new Chief Justice of India asking to be relieved of the responsibility, though my previous application was pending with former CJI KG Balakrishnan.”

Justifying his stand, Ahmadi said that he had not committed any impropriety by agreeing to head a multi-million dollar trust set up by the Union Carbide after the gas leak.

Justice Ahmadi, who headed the bench in 1996 that converted the CBI charge under the stringent provisions of 304-II that provided for maximum of 10-year imprisonment to Section with two-year maximum imprisonment, said it was easy for people to talk and make allegations but judges have to work as per the system.

A two-judge bench headed by then CJI Ahmadi reduced the charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder to causing death by negligence.

Giving his clarifications on the judgment, Justice Ahmadi rejected criticism of dilution of charge against Union Carbide executives in Bhopal gas tragedy case, saying in criminal law there was no concept of vicarious liability.

He also lamented the lack of a law to deal with disasters of Bhopal kind and said law can be amended to provide for adequate punishment.

Few days back, an organisation of Bhopal gas victims disputed Justice Ahmadi's claim that no one had filed a review petition after the Supreme Court dropped charges of culpable homicide against the accused in the case.

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• ‘Modi gov had allowed disposal of Bhopal`s toxic waste in Guj’

"Our organisation had filed a review petition but that was dismissed in 1996 by the Supreme Court, which was then headed by Ahmadi himself," the convenor of Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangthan, Abdul Jabbar had said.

As the guilty had not been charged under Section 304 of IPC (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), they were let off with imprisonment of only two years each, Jabbar claimed.

Justice Ahmadi, who had delivered the Bhopal gas tragedy case verdict in on June 09 1996, said he could not recollect whether a review petition was filed. However, he had earlier stated in a television interview that no review petition was filed.

Since retirement, Ahmadi has been presiding over Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust that runs a 350-bed superspeciality hospital. The trust was set up by Union Carbide.

A total of Rs 600 crore has gone into the trust, but its accounts are not in the public domain. The trust deed mandates that an SC judge should be its chairman and Ahmadi has been at its helm since retirement.

 

Man Who Warned of Bhopal Gas Leak

 

Congress spokesman Satyvrat Chaturvedi has defended former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi [ Images ] whose role in letting the guilty in the Bhopal gas tragedy get off lightly is under the scanner due to the public outcry over the recent judgment in the case -- 26 years after the event. On the night of 2/3 December, 1984, when deadly gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, Arjun Singh [ Images ] was chief minister of Madhya Pradesh [ Images ] and Gandhi was the prime minister of India [ Images ].

In the first few years after the tragedy, tremendous pressure was put up by the American corporate lobby and the government on India to save the US-based Union Carbide, the parent company, from civil and criminal liability.

As a result, at every little step, the law could not provide justice to the over 15,000 who died due to the gas leak. More than five lakh victims who suffered chronic diseases are struggling and pleading for help, even now.

The June 7 judgment of a local court in Bhopal, sentencing the convicted officials of the Indian arm of Union Carbide to a mere two-year sentence, has made the entire nation feel small and impotent before the might of the multinational corporations, the sluggish Indian justice system and its spineless political establishment.

The entire Bhopal saga was witnessed from close quarters by Rajkumar Keswani, an outstanding journalist, who had in fact foreseen this catastrophe. His work proves that the tragedy of Bhopal started much before December 3, 1984.

Two years before the Union Carbide factory leaked killer gas, he wrote in a weekly magazine called Rapat (news): 'Bhopal jwalamukhi ki kagaar par (Bhopal on the edge of a volcano)'.

Keswani has witnessed the entire saga of deception of the victims of Bhopal by the Indian and American governments and multinational corporations. He shares his agony in a telephonic interview with rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt.

You have been following the Bhopal gas leak case for 25 years. What was your first reaction on hearing the verdict on June 7?

I had no expectations on that day. The seed of this judgment was sown when a Supreme Court bench headed by then Chief Justice of India, A H Ahmadi, passed a judgment in 1996 that converted section 304 (II) (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the Indian penal code to 304-A (causing death by negligence) to try the case. In 1996 we knew the fate of the Bhopal gas case. He diluted the charges filed against Union Carbide. What happened was the culmination of injustice that started with that judgment.

Was there a design behind this?

I can't say how it was done. But surely there was some design. Eventually, after retirement, Justice Ahmadi became the lifetime chairman of the Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust and Research Centre which has funds worth millions of rupees. Those millions, paid by Union Carbide for the poor victims, are under his control even now.

The dilution of charges helped (UCC chairman) Warren Anderson and Union Carbide in a big way, right?

When we talk about Union Carbide and Anderson, we must remember that they have never ever been subject to Indian laws. They have never appeared before an Indian court, nor have they lost anything due to Bhopal or benefited by the June 7 judgment. Our country's system gave them eternal protection from any legal proceedings. There was no serious attempt at all to bring Anderson to this country in the last 25 years.

Can you tell us what kind of evidence you had against the US-based Union Carbide Corporation, parent company of Union Carbide India?   

I started working on this story in 1981. That was the time when my friend Mohammad Asharaf was working in Union Carbide India Limited. He died due to exposure to phosgene gas. I had an idea that some hazardous chemicals are being used in the Bhopal factory. I reported on his death and then worked for nine months on knowing about the factory. I reported my first story in September 1982. In October that year I ran a series and wrote weekly reports against Union Carbide and the possibility of risk to human lives due to the chemicals in the plant. People treated me like a crazy man. They used to tell me, 'Arre aisa kabhi hota hai kya? Aisa kabhi hua hai kya is duniya mein?' (Do things like this happen? Have such things happened anywhere in the world?)

People in government, who were in the know of things, were hand in glove with the management of Union Carbide. They would trust Union Carbide more than anything else. Union Carbide was the only multinational at that time in a small city like Bhopal. Their reputation was such that it was difficult for anyone to believe that they could be negligent. It was very disappointing for me.

But what kind of evidence did you have against UCC of the US?

In 1982, an audit team had visited Union Carbide in Bhopal. They had inspected the plant and said that certain safety measures must be taken, otherwise there could be a gas leak. I printed the report of the visit of the audit team and their observations in Jansatta before the 1984 gas leak.

At 15 places in that report, they had written that safety measures are not proper and it could have a 'runaway' reaction. So the plant had problems before the leak in 1984. There is enough proof. Second, UCC, USA said they were not involved in the day to day running of the plant so they could not be made responsible. There are telex messages as proof which shows that the company in USA was totally involved in all the decisions of the company in Bhopal. They were sending instructions to Bhopal.

UCC India had a works manager named J Mukund (one of the accused who was convicted on June 7). He had sent a message asking for advice about coating the pipes. The US-based parent company sent him a message saying that the best material for piping would be too expensive and too difficult to acquire. How can UCC, USA escape their responsibility when they were advising Bhopal to economise on safety measures? They were telling Bhopal to use cheaper material. They were advising it to compromise on safety. Mukund's message was sent on August 27, 1984. Just a few weeks before the fateful leak.

Do you have the copies of those telex exchanges?

Yes.

Justice Ahmadi, when he diluted the charges against the company, didn't see these telex messages?

He saw what he wanted to see. Actually, there was a review petition of his order but he rejected it. We had sent messages to all the members of Parliament at that time to press for a review of the dilution of charges against the company. There are hundreds of documents that suggest that the parent company was involved in the running of the Bhopal company and they were aware of the problems in the plant. I submitted all of it in a US court too.

In 1982, I had documents to prove that safety measures in the plant were faulty. I managed to raise the Union Carbide plant issue in the MP assembly. The government denied any such threat, it is on record. The government denied my report and said there is a fool-proof system in the factory and there is nothing to worry about. The government said all these things in defence of Union Carbide in December 1982! I wrote to the Chief Justice of India in 1982 to intervene in the Bhopal factory. Nobody cared. I got no response.

Who played the bigger game in the Bhopal 'cover-up'?

Union Carbide Corporation, USA, played the game with the help of the Government of India and the government of Madhya Pradesh. If you find out how the settlement of 1989 was reached, you will know what I am saying is correct. The settlement was done with the Supreme Court's sanction. Carbide agreed to pay Rs 705 crore and the Government of India agreed to drop all civil and criminal cases against Union Carbide, which was later challenged in the court. Who did this? It was Rajiv Gandhi who made this settlement possible. It was the ultimate shame that the Government of India accepted money for the victims to quash criminal proceedings against UCC.

I challenged it in the court with the help of Indira Jaising, my lawyer. Only after that petition was the criminal case revived in June 1989. Anyone can understand what the role of the Government of India has been in helping victims.   

It's very intriguing to see that after the Bhopal tragedy innumerable NGOs, from stalwarts like Indira Jaising to hundreds of local community leaders, fought for the victims but nothing came out of it. Why such a total failure?

This is a very serious question. I am also worried about it. I don't know if I should say anything on it.

But so much has been done by the foot soldiers of civil society. All over the world the victims have sympathisers. Still justice was not done. Why?

These are voices only. In society today only a loud bang is heard. That can be done by the television media. If the people would have reacted in a similar manner in 1996 to Justice Ahmadi's decision, the Bhopal verdict would have been different.

How do you look at the Bhopal judgment?

I think the judge in his wisdom has not spoken much on (UC India chairman) Keshub Mahindra's role. We have a grouse against it. It should be challenged. The Indian managers were equally responsible.

In Bhopal, during these 26 years, has Keshub Mahindra ever said sorry?

No. Rather, they have been manipulating the case. I have evidence to say so.

Who are the guilty men of Bhopal?

There is Union Carbide Company who compromised safety for profit. There was the Indian government who could not withstand the might of the multinationals. The cause of the tragedy was Union Carbide, but the injustice was due to the slow process of the judiciary and the Central Bureau of Investigation. The investigating agency became a partner in crime.

Who helped Anderson? Who executed the operation to get him out of India on December 7, 1984?

The American government and the US embassy put pressure on the Indian government. They put pressure on the Prime Minister's Office. Rajiv Gandhi, reportedly, asked Arun Singh to ensure Anderson's release. Chief Minister Arjun Singh didn't convey to New Delhi [ Images ] the popular sentiments on the ground in Bhopal.

We reported these things then. We have no recordings of it now but we reported though our sources.

You are fighting since 26 years but now you see all around that people are reacting sensitively. There is a feeling of anguish and frustration. How do you see the new-found interest in the Bhopal case?

This is due to the new media and the images on television. Yeh TV ka kamal hai. These days, we are dictated by images on TV. They make us cry and they make us laugh. It is good, and even bad sometimes. In the case of Bhopal tragedy it is good that TV is shaking our memories.

 

Police released Anderson after 'deleting' stringent charge

 

Three days after the Bhopal gas tragedy, the police here had released the then Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson and two others on bail by "deleting" in the complaint a stringent charge under the IPC against them, trial court sources said today.

A perusal of court documents shows that the in-charge of the Hanuman Ganj Police Station, Surender Singh, had initially arrested Anderson, then UCIL chairman Keshub Mahindra and senior company official Vijay Prakash Gokhale at 10.10 AM on December 7,1984 in the presence of one Rakesh Kumar under various sections of IPC including 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder).

They were also charged with sections 304 A (causing death by negligence), 278 (making atmosphere noxious to health), 284 (negligent conduct with respect to poisonous substance), 426 (mischief) and 429 (mischief by killing or maiming cattle, other animals).

Later, the police released the three, "deleting" the charge against them under Section 304, they said.

The sources said that police had no right to delete such a charge and in doing so they had exceeded their brief.

"If the charge had not been deleted, Anderson may not have been able to leave India," they said.

The CBI had later booked Mahindra and Gokhale under Section 304 which provides for prison term of 10 years. However, the Supreme Court had dropped the stringent section in the case.

Over 15,000 people were killed and thousands of others maimed when the deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984.

MP CM seeks explanation from Arjun Singh on how Anderson fled

New Delhi: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday said that his government will go to any extent to get justice for Bhopal gas victims and demanded an explanation from then Chief Minister Arjun Singh on how former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson fled the country.

"We will go to any extent to get justice for the victims...This is not an issue of Bhopal or the state. It should act as an example of how to give punishment in such cases," he told reporters here.

Noting that the people of the state felt "let down" following the gas tragedy verdict, Chouhan said he has written to Arjun Singh and asked for a reply on the circumstances that led to Anderson's escape.

"Let Arjun Singh explain it. Whether he did it (gave permission for providing state aircraft) himself or anybody told him to do so. We want a reply from him if a wrong direction was given. And after all, why such a direction was given.

"There are lot many questions like why the CBI filed no appeal when the charges in the case were diluted in 1997. If he gives a statement, things would be clear. The state and the country want to know these circumstances," he said.

Chouhan said a five-member team of legal experts has been set up by the state government to look into the issue and examine what could be done legally to get Bhopal gas victims justice. The interim report of the team would be out in the next ten days, he said.

Asked about the conflicting statements of Congress leaders like Digvijay Singh and Satyavrat Chaturvedi on Anderson fleeing the country, Chouhan said he did not want to politicise the issue but added that this was only leading to confusion.

"Somebody is saying the Centre is responsible while somebody else says the issues comes under the state. Different people are speaking in different voices...One wants to protect somebody while the other wants to trap someone else.

"This is leading to confusion... Arjun Singh should speak the truth. What other Congress leaders are speaking is only bringing out the contradictions within the Congress party," he said.

He said that his government is open to all options and will decide after the committee report on whether to constitute a probe commission go into the lapses or take up the issue with US courts.

CBI failed to act on warrant against Anderson last year

Bhopal: The trial court in the Bhopal gas tragedy case had issued an arrest warrant against former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson last year but the CBI had failed to give any written response to it, according to court sources.

They said the warrant, the second against Anderson, was issued by Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohan P Tiwari on July 2, 2009 but the CBI did not give any written response to it.

Anderson was the chairman of the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) at the time of the disaster in December 1984 which left over 15,000 people dead.

Instead, they said, a CBI official met Tiwari and orally conveyed to him that for the agency, Anderson's case had been closed.

The first court warrant against Anderson was issued in 1992.

Direction to release Anderson must have come from CM: Ex HS

New Delhi: Former Madhya Pradesh Home Secretary K S Sharma on Friday said that the then Chief Minister Arjun Singh may have given directions to officials to release former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson.

Sharma, who was the Home Secretary when the Bhopal gas tragedy took place, said the pressure to release Anderson must have come from the Chief Minister as "no officer would take such a step without direct instructions from the government".

"Right from the beginning there had been some soft approach towards the whole thing otherwise he (Anderson) would have not been kept in a guest house when he was in custody. Releasing an accused of such a heinous crime on the same day means there was a tremendous pressure," he said.

"...It is difficult to say from where this pressure came but certainly the pressure from Chief Minister on officials must have been there because no officer would take such a step without direct instructions from government."

Sharma claimed despite being the Home Secretary he was not kept in the loop and "not informed about Anderson's release."

To a question whether there was pressure on Arjun Singh, he said: "This is not known to me whether there was some pressure on Arjun Singh or not...I did not discuss with Chief Minister Arjun Singh. I really do not know.

"But he certainly gave (some) instructions because the Collector had said the Chief Secretary told him. The Chief Secretary should not have told him. The Chief Secretary should not have passed on these instructions without very strong instructions from the Chief Minister," he said.

He also questioned the Government's decision to keep Anderson in a guest house after his arrest and termed the grant of bail to him as illegal.

"It is certainly unusual. Although in a few cases it does happen but it is when the offence is not heinous and the person is respectable. But so far as this case is concerned, 15,000 persons have died and keeping accused in rest house was certainly, I would say, very unfortunate and shouldn't have been done," Sharma said.

"When the case, which was registered under Section 304 which is a non-bailable cognisable offence in which the bail can only be granted by Sessions court after the discussions and arguments by both sides. Therefore the grant of bail in my view was illegal," the former bureaucrat said.

"In a high profile case, in which so many persons died and somebody who had come from the US has been arrested and if he has been released same day on bail, not informing me or not keeping me in the loop, not consulting me was certainly not normal. In such cases the Home Secretary is always consulted."

Sharma said the then Bhopal Superintendent of Police had informed him about Anderson's arrest and he was not aware that he was released on bail.

"Whether there was pressure or not, I am not aware because till his release I was not in the loop. I was not consulted at all. So I have absolutely no information whether there was pressure to release," Sharma said.

Congress denies Rajiv had a role in Anderson escape

New Delhi: The Congress party on Friday strongly rejected a former prime ministerial aide P.C. Alexander's indication that the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi had helped Warren Anderson, the CEO of Union Carbide Corp in 1984, escape from the country within days of Bhopal gas tragedy.

Alexander reportedly stated that Gandhi and then Madhya Pradesh chief minister Arjun Singh were directly in touch with each other over the escape of Anderson from the country barely days after the world's biggest industrial disaster in Bhopal Dec 2-3, 1984.

Congress spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan said there "is nothing unusual" in a prime minister and a chief minister being in constant touch with each other.

She said the Group of Ministers for Bhopal gas tragedy would "gather all information and put it before the people".

The GoM is headed by Home Minister P. Chidambaram and includes Law and Justice Minister M. Veerappa Moily, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, Minister for Road Transport and Highways Kamal Nath, Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers M.K. Alagiri, Minister for Urban Development Jaipal Reddy, Science and Technology Minister Prithviraj Chauhan and Minister of Housing and Tourism Kumari Selja.

The  Bhopal Gas Tragedy Continues

An American court absolving UCC of its liabilities for environmental contamination in Bhopal is a travesty of justice

 

IN YET another blow to the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy survivors, an American court has ruled that it was Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL) and not its parent company, Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), which was responsible for the generation and disposal of the hazardous waste that has contaminated the city’s soil and groundwater.

While delivering his judgment on 26 June, Judge John F Keenan found “no evidence indicating that UCIL manufactured pesticides on UCC’s behalf, entered into contracts or other business dealings on UCC’s behalf, or otherwise acted in UCC’s name”. According to him, UCC and UCIL were separate entities at “arm’s length” from each other and UCC exerted no control over UCIL.

Significantly, it was the same court that in May 1986 sent the case for compensation to the Indian courts. At that time, the Indian government, on behalf of the victims, had filed a suit for $3.3 billion as compensation arguing that since the disaster was a consequence of decisions taken by the parent corporation, an American court was the appropriate forum.

Aware of the massive compensation awarded in cases of corporate malfeasance by US courts, UCC argued that the case be sent to India. The US court presided over by Judge Keenan ruled in favour of UCC and sent the case to India. “The court is firmly convinced that the Indian legal system is in a far better position than the American courts to determine the cause of the tragic event and thereby fix liability,” he had said.

In the context of the judgment delivered on 26 June, it would be interesting to see how it matches up with the pronouncements of the “far better” placed Indian judiciary on the specific issue of liability of UCC vis-à-vis that of its Indian subsidiary.

It was the same US court that in May 1986 sent the case for compensation to the Indian courts

Following Judge Keenan’s 1986 order, the case for compensation was presented before the Bhopal District Court where Chief Judicial Magistrate MW Deo directed that “UCC will deposit in this court Rs 350 crore for payment of substantial interim compensation and welfare measures for the gas victims”. Significantly, he did not make any pronouncement against UCIL.

UCC appealed against this order before the Madhya Pradesh High Court where Justice SK Seth upheld Judge Deo’s directions to UCC but brought down the compensation amount to Rs 250 crore. Judge Seth justified his direction on the grounds that, “UCC owned more than half the stock of UCIL as well as controlled its board of directors and as such was a parent and holding company of UCIL under Indian law. Thus, it was in fact the defendant UCC that designed, constructed, owned, operated, managed and controlled the Bhopal plant through its Indian subsidiary.”

In response to UCC’s contention that it had no control over the running of the Bhopal plant, Judge Seth observed, “During 1978-84, certain vital decisions regarding the fate of the Bhopal plant, including those relating to its sale, lease or dismantling and shipment to a foreign country, were taken at different stages by the UCC management, sometimes even without reference to the Indian company, indicating complete control of the defendant UCC over the affairs of the Indian company.”

UCC appealed against Justice Seth’s order in the Supreme Court and it eventually led to a collusive settlement in February 1989 for $470 million. The court directed that the bulk of the amount — $425 million — was to come from UCC and the rest from its Indian subsidiary. In October 1991, the order was modified and criminal charges against UCC and its officials and subsidiaries were reinstated. When UCC continued to abscond from Indian courts, in April 1992, Chief Judicial Magistrate Gulab Sharma directed that “movable and immovable properties of UCC located in India be attached”.

In June 2010, Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohan P Tiwari, in his judgment in the criminal case against UCIL and its officials, remarked, “The tragedy was caused by the synergy of the very worst of American and Indian cultures. An American corporation cynically used a third world country to escape from the increasingly strict safety standards imposed at home.”

Reportedly, Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid has refused to comment on Judge Keenan’s verdict absolving UCC of its liabilities. The least he could do is point out that between the 1986 and 2012 judgments, only one could be right.

 

 

 

Judgement Fixing in  Courts of USA

 

Corruption is the abuse of power by a public official for private gain or any organized, interdependent system in which part of the system is either not performing duties it was originally intended to, or performing them in an improper way, to the detriment of the system's original purpose. The abuse of public offices for private gain is paradigmatic of corruption.

A common belief is that corruption is a judge taking bribes. The definition exceeds this theory. Corruption describes any organized, interdependent system in which part of the system is either not performing duties it was originally intended to, or performing them in an improper way, to the detriment of the system's original purpose.
 

Corrupt judicial systems not only violate the basic right to equality before the law but deny procedural rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

 

While corruption may facilitate criminal enterprise such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and mail fraud.; it is not restricted to these activities. In this country, corruption is so common that it is expected when ordinary businesses or citizens interact with government officials. The end-point of political corruption is a kleptocracy, literally "rule by thieves".

 

 

Double Standard : BP And Bhopal
By Bill Quigley & Alex Tuscano

When President Barak Obama went after BP and demanded a $20 billion dollar fund be set up for victims of the Gulf oil spill, the people of India were furious. They saw a US double standard. The US demonstrated it values human life within the US more than the lives of the people of India.
BP should pay $20 billion in compensation, probably even more. The people of India agree with that.
But people are angry because the US is treating the oil spill, called the worst environmental disaster in US history, in a radically different way than the US treated the explosion of a US-owned pesticide plant in Bhopal India, which some call the worst industrial disaster in history.
The 1984 Bhopal explosion released tons of toxic chemicals into the air, claimed the lives of between 15,000 and 20,000 people within two weeks, and disabled hundreds of thousands of others – many still suffering from physical damage and genetic defects.
The plant that exploded was operated by Union Carbide India Limited, a corporation owned by Union Carbide of the United States.
The disaster occurred in a thickly populated area close to the central railway station in Bhopal, an urban area of 1.5 million in the heart of India. Most people in the area lived in shanty huts.
Thousands of dead humans and animals filled the streets of Bhopal. Survivors complain of genetic damage which has caused widespread birth defects in children and even grandchildren of those exposed.
The soil and water of Bhopal remain toxic with heavy pesticide residue and toxic metals like lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium and chromium.
While President Obama displayed outrage at BP officials over the 11 deaths from the US oil spill, the US has refused to extradite Warren Anderson, the chair of Union Carbide, to face charges for his role in the Bhopal disaster.
Recall too that Obama advisor Larry Summers, then chief economist at the World Bank, stated in an infamous 1971 memo. “Just between you and me, shouldn’t the world Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the Less Developed Countries?... I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted…”
Obsolete and hazardous industries have been systematically transferred to the third world countries to not only exploit the cheap labor but also to avoid disastrous impact of these industries on the advanced countries.
Union Carbide put profit for the corporation above the lives and health of millions of people. Dow Chemical, which took over Union Carbide, is attempting to distance itself from all responsibility.
In India there were two Bhopal developments this month. The Indian government announced a compensation package of $280 million for Bhopal victims, about $22,000 for each of the families of the deceased according to the BBC, and seven former Indian managers of the Bhopal plant were given two year jail sentences for their part in the explosion. These legal developments are a mockery of justice for one of the world’s greatest disasters.
We call on the people of the US and the people of India to join together to demand our governments respect the human rights of all people, no matter where they live.
Together we must bring about change in corporate development. We have to emphasize social production for the needs of people and improved social relations.
If we continue to value some lives more than others, and to allow corporations to spoil some areas with impunity, our world will not last.
Unless we respect the human rights of all people and demand corporations do that as well, we will be damned to live out the Cree Indian prophecy “Only when the last tree from this earth has been cut down, only when the last river has been poisoned, only when the last fish has been caught, only then will humankind learn that money cannot be eaten.”

 

 

 

Bhopal gas tragedy: US court absolves Union Carbide of liability

 

In a setback to 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy victims, a US court has held that neither Union Carbide nor its former chairman Warren Anderson were liable for environmental remediation or pollution-related claims at the firm's former chemical plant in Bhopal. 

US district judge John Keena in Manhattan dismissed a lawsuit accusing the company of causing soil and water pollution around the Bhopal plant due to the disaster, and ruled that Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and Anderson were not liable for remediation or pollution-related claims. 

The court ruled that it was Union Carbide India Ltd, and not its parent company UCC that was responsible for the generation and disposal of the waste that polluted drinking water, and the liability rests with the state government. 

Plaintiffs Janki Bai Sahu and others had alleged that "toxic substances seeped into a ground aquifer, polluting the soil and drinking water supply in residential communities surrounding the former Bhopal Plant site". 

They alleged that exposure to soil and drinking water polluted by hazardous waste produced Union Carbine India Ltd caused injuries. 

"The summary judgement record certainly indicates that UCIL consulted with UCC about its waste disposal plans and on non-environmental business matter like its strategic plan. However, nothing in the evidence suggests the necessity of UCC's approval for the actions about which plaintiffs complain," the court said in its order. 

"Moreover, there is no evidence in this extensive record indicating that UCIL manufactured pesticides on UCC's behalf, entered into contracts or other business dealings on UCC's behalf, or otherwise acted in UCC's name," it said. 

The industrial accident, the worst in Indian history, led to the leak of poisonous methyl isocyanate, claiming thousands of lives in the Madhya Pradesh capital.

 

REWIND: Finding Bhopal gas tragedy's Warren Anderson

 

October 31, 2014 12:56 IST

On Friday, Warren M Anderson, the former chief of Union Carbide Corporation died at a nursing home in Florida.

Anderson, 92, faced prosecution for his role in the Bhopal gas tragedy that claimed the lives of over 15,000 people.

Back in September 2002, Shakti Bhatt/Rediff.com located the former Union Carbide chairman’s luxury home in New York, declared unknown by the American and Indian governments.

Rediff.com reproduces the 2002 feature about his life in hiding. 

Warren Anderson's home in Bridgehampton, New York, militates against the notion of a hiding place.

Located on a street that runs off the main road, the gates of the house are open. As you enter, the neatly trimmed garden flowers, alternatively red and white, vie for attention with the sparkling vintage Buick Roadmaster parked outside the door.

If you stroll around the house, you come upon a large freshly cut lawn with two full-size beach chairs. The curtains in the bedroom are drawn. A king size bed with cream sheets and satin blue pillows, flanked by an ornate headboard, has just been tidied.

Anderson and his wife Lillian live in this luxury home in the Hamptons, the weekend resort for the rich and famous. And, occasionally, the infamous.

Anderson has lived here since he was charged with 'culpable homicide' for the disaster at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal in December 1984 that consumed the lives of over 20,000 people. If Anderson -- then Union Carbide CEO -- is ever extradited to India, he could face charges leading to 10 to 20 years in a dirty, overcrowded, rat-infested Indian prison.

Bridgehampton is an intensely private neighbourhood. An outsider driving around its roads is distinctly discernible and stared at. A five-minute walk from Anderson's home on Ocean Road takes you to the water. A man is perched in his red sports jeep, reading a golf magazine.

"Do you know Warren Anderson?" I ask him.

He looks up, a trifle annoyed at being disturbed. "Yeah. I mean we are not best friends but I know who he is," he says.

I begin to walk away. He stops me and says, “You know, yesterday there was this woman outside his home with a poster saying 'Go back to India’.”

"Do you know why?" I ask.

"Nope. That is his business,' says the gray-haired man, and goes back to his magazine.

The woman with the poster was Diane Wilson, a shrimp farmer from Texas who now spends most of her time holding protests against the former CEO of Union Carbide, now a part of Michigan-based Dow Chemicals.

Anderson clearly believes it is not any of his business either.

When a rally of more than 1,000 protestors stood outside his home last week, he stepped outside to speak to them.

"Yell at them is more like it," says Arvind Rajagopal, professor of media at New YorkUniversity who is involved with the Bhopal awareness campaign in this country. "He said, 'Get your facts right. They bulldozed the clinic we built'. That is bullshit. No clinic was bulldozed. In fact, the only clinic they built is still there in Bhopal."

Anderson is clearly upset he has been found.

It was detection work not by an investigative journalist but by a campaigner for GreenPeace. Casey Harrell left his office in Washington, DC, early one morning to drive to New York. He knew it was going to be an exciting day.

After weeks of research, he had located the address of Anderson's $900,000 home, declared unknown by the American and Indian governments. Harrell wanted to meet Anderson and serve him the arrest warrant issued 10 years ago by a Bhopal district court.

August 28, Harrell sat inside his car with a colleague. A day before, photographers from London's Mirror newspaper had shot a picture of a visibly disconcerted Anderson.

MUST READ: Bhopal gas tragedy: Remembering what was left behind

Anderson's Cadillac pulled into his house. Harrell waited. Anderson was rinsing the gravel off his car when Harrell, with a mini camera on him, made his move. Guessing the nature of Harrell's visit, Anderson said, 'Oh, Mr Anderson is not around right now. What do you want with him?'

Harrell, while recognising Anderson, replied he had some questions to ask the owner. Right after, an elderly woman driving her car stopped outside Anderson's home. She had noticed the signs of aggravation on Anderson's face.

'Hey, Anderson! Is anything the matter?' she called out.

"It was then that Anderson got really agitated," recalls Harrell.

"He told the lady not to mention his name and ran inside the house. I started to run after him. Fortunately, as he was about to close the door, I stuck in my foot and threw the warrant inside."

Anderson's neighbour approached Harrell. 'You are mistaken. He is Warren McLaughlin, not Warren Anderson.' Seeing that her listener was not convinced, she raised her voice in exasperation and repeated, 'Don't you understand? He is not the former Union Carbide executive.'

Harrell smiled. 'Ma'am, I never said anything about Union Carbide.'

'Oh my!' gasped Anderson's helpful neighbour and sped away in her Lincoln.

For Harrell and those actively involved in helping Bhopal's victims receive justice, this was a symbolic act. In the 18 years that have passed since the tragedy, little has been done for the families that continue to suffer the long-term consequences of the toxic gas leakage that led, among other things, to severe contamination of the groundwater. Ninety per cent of the victims are said to have received less than $500.

Victims' groups have mobilised themselves under the leadership of Satinath Sarangi, a 48-year-old survivor. In 1997, he met Raj Sharma, a lawyer who had just graduated out of the American University Law School.

While in college, Sharma took a course offered by a visiting professor, Upendra Bakshi,that informed him about the legal history of the Bhopal accident.

Sharma was hooked. He decided to leave for Bhopal following his graduation.

"The scene in Bhopal was very bad. There was a situation where one person was dying every day. The long-term consequences were beginning to set in, most strongly in women, such as severe menstrual irregularities, birth defects in the children of survivors and such," says Sharma.

Two years later, Sharma filed a lawsuit in the US against Union Carbide and Anderson, and has been litigating since.

Even as he is impressed by the will of the Bhopal victims to pursue justice, he expresses shock at the behaviour of Indian government officials.

"The Indian government refused to put in even a single line or letter for us. They did not want to be embarrassed in front of Union Carbide, embarrassed to be supporting their own people. I had heard of the government's collusion with the company before I left for Bhopal. I said to myself, 'Don't be naive, this cannot be true,' until I saw it happening with my own eyes," says Sharma.

The lack of Indian political will has a lot to do with economics, claim those involved with the movement. "The Government of India is bending over backwards to appease Union Carbide, now Dow Chemicals. They are very afraid of creating a negative environment for international corporations in line to invest in India," believes Rajagopal.

India's Central Bureau of Investigation, the prosecuting agency, recently filed papers to reduce the charges against Anderson, much to the outrage of activists fighting to bring him to India for trial. But the Bhopal high court judge rejected the CBI papers, reasoning that Anderson had not applied to any Indian court to dilute the charges against him.

In a 1989 settlement, Union Carbide paid the Indian government $470 million as damages. The amount had scaled down from the $3 billion originally sought. But some victims are still waiting to receive their share of the money.

When a Channel Four reporter from London landed at Anderson's home last week, he found Lillian Anderson on the front lawn.

'It is not Union Carbide's fault,' she told the reporter. 'Union Carbide has been good to them. You just do not understand. We did all we can.'

When the reporter urged her to answer more questions, she excused herself to prepare for a dinner party that she complained was 'not even catered.'

"This is essentially saying 'we are more concerned about our dinner party than discussing the lives of hundreds and thousands of people that continue to suffer in the aftermath of the disaster. Leave us alone because we have to go and live our nice life,'" Harrell said.

 

 

The  Bhopal Gas Tragedy Continues

An American court absolving UCC of its liabilities for environmental contamination in Bhopal is a travesty of justice

 

IN YET another blow to the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy survivors, an American court has ruled that it was Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL) and not its parent company, Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), which was responsible for the generation and disposal of the hazardous waste that has contaminated the city’s soil and groundwater.

While delivering his judgment on 26 June, Judge John F Keenan found “no evidence indicating that UCIL manufactured pesticides on UCC’s behalf, entered into contracts or other business dealings on UCC’s behalf, or otherwise acted in UCC’s name”. According to him, UCC and UCIL were separate entities at “arm’s length” from each other and UCC exerted no control over UCIL.

Significantly, it was the same court that in May 1986 sent the case for compensation to the Indian courts. At that time, the Indian government, on behalf of the victims, had filed a suit for $3.3 billion as compensation arguing that since the disaster was a consequence of decisions taken by the parent corporation, an American court was the appropriate forum.

Aware of the massive compensation awarded in cases of corporate malfeasance by US courts, UCC argued that the case be sent to India. The US court presided over by Judge Keenan ruled in favour of UCC and sent the case to India. “The court is firmly convinced that the Indian legal system is in a far better position than the American courts to determine the cause of the tragic event and thereby fix liability,” he had said.

In the context of the judgment delivered on 26 June, it would be interesting to see how it matches up with the pronouncements of the “far better” placed Indian judiciary on the specific issue of liability of UCC vis-à-vis that of its Indian subsidiary.

It was the same US court that in May 1986 sent the case for compensation to the Indian courts

Following Judge Keenan’s 1986 order, the case for compensation was presented before the Bhopal District Court where Chief Judicial Magistrate MW Deo directed that “UCC will deposit in this court Rs 350 crore for payment of substantial interim compensation and welfare measures for the gas victims”. Significantly, he did not make any pronouncement against UCIL.

UCC appealed against this order before the Madhya Pradesh High Court where Justice SK Seth upheld Judge Deo’s directions to UCC but brought down the compensation amount to Rs 250 crore. Judge Seth justified his direction on the grounds that, “UCC owned more than half the stock of UCIL as well as controlled its board of directors and as such was a parent and holding company of UCIL under Indian law. Thus, it was in fact the defendant UCC that designed, constructed, owned, operated, managed and controlled the Bhopal plant through its Indian subsidiary.”

In response to UCC’s contention that it had no control over the running of the Bhopal plant, Judge Seth observed, “During 1978-84, certain vital decisions regarding the fate of the Bhopal plant, including those relating to its sale, lease or dismantling and shipment to a foreign country, were taken at different stages by the UCC management, sometimes even without reference to the Indian company, indicating complete control of the defendant UCC over the affairs of the Indian company.”

UCC appealed against Justice Seth’s order in the Supreme Court and it eventually led to a collusive settlement in February 1989 for $470 million. The court directed that the bulk of the amount — $425 million — was to come from UCC and the rest from its Indian subsidiary. In October 1991, the order was modified and criminal charges against UCC and its officials and subsidiaries were reinstated. When UCC continued to abscond from Indian courts, in April 1992, Chief Judicial Magistrate Gulab Sharma directed that “movable and immovable properties of UCC located in India be attached”.

In June 2010, Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohan P Tiwari, in his judgment in the criminal case against UCIL and its officials, remarked, “The tragedy was caused by the synergy of the very worst of American and Indian cultures. An American corporation cynically used a third world country to escape from the increasingly strict safety standards imposed at home.”

Reportedly, Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid has refused to comment on Judge Keenan’s verdict absolving UCC of its liabilities. The least he could do is point out that between the 1986 and 2012 judgments, only one could be right.

 

 

 

Judgement Fixing in  Courts of USA

 

Corruption is the abuse of power by a public official for private gain or any organized, interdependent system in which part of the system is either not performing duties it was originally intended to, or performing them in an improper way, to the detriment of the system's original purpose. The abuse of public offices for private gain is paradigmatic of corruption.

A common belief is that corruption is a judge taking bribes. The definition exceeds this theory. Corruption describes any organized, interdependent system in which part of the system is either not performing duties it was originally intended to, or performing them in an improper way, to the detriment of the system's original purpose.
 

Corrupt judicial systems not only violate the basic right to equality before the law but deny procedural rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

 

While corruption may facilitate criminal enterprise such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and mail fraud.; it is not restricted to these activities. In this country, corruption is so common that it is expected when ordinary businesses or citizens interact with government officials. The end-point of political corruption is a kleptocracy, literally "rule by thieves".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                 

Shame Shame to Supreme Court of India & Supreme Court of USA

-          Match Fixing in the Supreme  Courts of USA & India

 

The Final Verdict is out in Bhopal Gas Tragedy . This kind of Injustice can only happen in banana republics , where rich crooks are protected by authorities & courts. SHAME SHAME to supreme court of India , supreme court of USA & Government of USA , for practicing double standards in enforcement of law & justice.

 

Double standards of supreme court of India

http://sites.google.com/site/sosevoiceforjustice/is-the-supreme-court-of-india-deaf-dumb-blind

 

PIL Appeal & Show Cause Notice to Supreme Court of India

http://sites.google.com/site/eclarionofdalit/pil-appeal-show-cause-notice-to-supreme-court-of-india 

 

Double Standard : BP And Bhopal
By Bill Quigley & Alex Tuscano

When President Barak Obama went after BP and demanded a $20 billion dollar fund be set up for victims of the Gulf oil spill, the people of India were furious. They saw a US double standard. The US demonstrated it values human life within the US more than the lives of the people of India.
BP should pay $20 billion in compensation, probably even more. The people of India agree with that.
But people are angry because the US is treating the oil spill, called the worst environmental disaster in US history, in a radically different way than the US treated the explosion of a US-owned pesticide plant in Bhopal India, which some call the worst industrial disaster in history.
The 1984 Bhopal explosion released tons of toxic chemicals into the air, claimed the lives of between 15,000 and 20,000 people within two weeks, and disabled hundreds of thousands of others – many still suffering from physical damage and genetic defects.
The plant that exploded was operated by Union Carbide India Limited, a corporation owned by Union Carbide of the United States.
The disaster occurred in a thickly populated area close to the central railway station in Bhopal, an urban area of 1.5 million in the heart of India. Most people in the area lived in shanty huts.
Thousands of dead humans and animals filled the streets of Bhopal. Survivors complain of genetic damage which has caused widespread birth defects in children and even grandchildren of those exposed.
The soil and water of Bhopal remain toxic with heavy pesticide residue and toxic metals like lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium and chromium.
While President Obama displayed outrage at BP officials over the 11 deaths from the US oil spill, the US has refused to extradite Warren Anderson, the chair of Union Carbide, to face charges for his role in the Bhopal disaster.
Recall too that Obama advisor Larry Summers, then chief economist at the World Bank, stated in an infamous 1971 memo. “Just between you and me, shouldn’t the world Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the Less Developed Countries?... I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted…”
Obsolete and hazardous industries have been systematically transferred to the third world countries to not only exploit the cheap labor but also to avoid disastrous impact of these industries on the advanced countries.
Union Carbide put profit for the corporation above the lives and health of millions of people. Dow Chemical, which took over Union Carbide, is attempting to distance itself from all responsibility.
In India there were two Bhopal developments this month. The Indian government announced a compensation package of $280 million for Bhopal victims, about $22,000 for each of the families of the deceased according to the BBC, and seven former Indian managers of the Bhopal plant were given two year jail sentences for their part in the explosion. These legal developments are a mockery of justice for one of the world’s greatest disasters.
We call on the people of the US and the people of India to join together to demand our governments respect the human rights of all people, no matter where they live.
Together we must bring about change in corporate development. We have to emphasize social production for the needs of people and improved social relations.
If we continue to value some lives more than others, and to allow corporations to spoil some areas with impunity, our world will not last.
Unless we respect the human rights of all people and demand corporations do that as well, we will be damned to live out the Cree Indian prophecy “Only when the last tree from this earth has been cut down, only when the last river has been poisoned, only when the last fish has been caught, only then will humankind learn that money cannot be eaten.”

 

 

 

Bhopal gas tragedy: US court absolves Union Carbide of liability

 

In a setback to 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy victims, a US court has held that neither Union Carbide nor its former chairman Warren Anderson were liable for environmental remediation or pollution-related claims at the firm's former chemical plant in Bhopal. 

US district judge John Keena in Manhattan dismissed a lawsuit accusing the company of causing soil and water pollution around the Bhopal plant due to the disaster, and ruled that Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and Anderson were not liable for remediation or pollution-related claims. 

The court ruled that it was Union Carbide India Ltd, and not its parent company UCC that was responsible for the generation and disposal of the waste that polluted drinking water, and the liability rests with the state government. 

Plaintiffs Janki Bai Sahu and others had alleged that "toxic substances seeped into a ground aquifer, polluting the soil and drinking water supply in residential communities surrounding the former Bhopal Plant site". 

They alleged that exposure to soil and drinking water polluted by hazardous waste produced Union Carbine India Ltd caused injuries. 

"The summary judgement record certainly indicates that UCIL consulted with UCC about its waste disposal plans and on non-environmental business matter like its strategic plan. However, nothing in the evidence suggests the necessity of UCC's approval for the actions about which plaintiffs complain," the court said in its order. 

"Moreover, there is no evidence in this extensive record indicating that UCIL manufactured pesticides on UCC's behalf, entered into contracts or other business dealings on UCC's behalf, or otherwise acted in UCC's name," it said. 

The industrial accident, the worst in Indian history, led to the leak of poisonous methyl isocyanate, claiming thousands of lives in the Madhya Pradesh capital.

 

Editorial : BHOPAL GAS  VERDICT FIXED -  Shame Shame to Supreme Court of India & Supreme Court of USA

Now it is a known fact that Bhopal  Gas Leak Case Verdict was FIXED years before ,  MATCH FIXED  by then MP Government Chief Minister , Indian Prime Minister and most shame fully Chief Justice of India.
Now The Final Verdict is out in Bhopal Gas Tragedy . This kind of Injustice can only happen in banana republics , where rich crooks are protected by authorities & courts. SHAME SHAME to supreme court of India , supreme court of USA & Government of USA , for practicing double standards in enforcement of law & justice.

Double standards of supreme court of India
http://sites.google.com/site/sosevoiceforjustice/is-the-supreme-court-of-india-deaf-dumb-blind 

PIL Appeal & Show Cause Notice to Supreme Court of India
http://sites.google.com/site/eclarionofdalit/pil-appeal-show-cause-notice-to-supreme-court-of-india  

In India, Favorable treatment is given by police & courts of law for rich crooks where as poor innocents are harassed , tortured by the very same police & judges . In india Some MP , MLAs even take money for asking questions in parliament / legislature , Favourable laws are enacted to legalize crimes of rich crooks  for example : Illegal land encroachments by rich crooks. The same MPs , MLAs are not aware about problems of poor public , they don’t even open their mouth for asking questions on welfare of poor , let alone enact laws for welfare of poor. No government law , no decisions of judges , no orders of public servants are sacrosanct . Hereby , e-voice urges the supreme court of india , 

1.       To legally prosecute the jurisdictional  police who changed the charge sheet , who let out  Main criminal Anderson illegally without orders from the  court.

2.       To legally prosecute the SSP , DC of the district , Then Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh & Then Prime Minister of GOI , who fully aided the main accussed , criminal Anderson to escape , to jump law.

3.       To legally prosecute Indian Public Servants , who were responsible for withdrawing the case from US Courts of Justice.

4.       To legally prosecute Then Chief Justice of India Justice Ahmadi & His bench colleagues , who diluted the case by changing the clause under which  Anderson & others were charged.

The Public servants – Mps , MLAs , Judges , IAS / IPS officers  , Police  take thousands of rupees monthly salary , cars , bungalows , 5-star hotel stay together with 5-star meal complete with alchoholic drinks , 5-star health care at premium hospitals , business class air travel , foreign tours , etc all at tax payer’s expense. After enjoying to the hilt at taxpayer’s expense  , these same public servants don’t serve the public , they serve the rich crooks , anti nationals in their greed for more money. 

All the while the same poor tax payer suffers without justice . In India more than 50 Crore people are barely surviving on a single piece meal .Let the corrupt public servants eat their 5-star meals by the side of the graves of Bhopal Gas Victims. Atleast this will open the eyes of honest few in public service – police , judiciary & parliament , it is a fond hope. Jai Hind. Vande Mataram.

Your’s sincerely,
Nagaraj.M.R.

An appeal to honourable supreme court of USA & HE Honourable president 
of USA  Mr.Obama 
  
Your government protects all Americans, all American companies both 
inside America & abroad. If an American tourist is murdered in a third 
country , American investigators fly over to that country  to conduct 
investigation in total disregard to local laws. In the same way , if 
the interests of an American company is threatened in a third country 
American government goes to it's rescue. 
  
However , when an American company butchers , causes mass man 
slaughter in a third country , as an American company did in Bhopal 
India , no action by American government. Still the said American 
company has not removed , cleared the accident site of poisonous 
debris at Bhopal India since decades and still causing mass man 
slaughter  , no action by American government  why ? 
  
Some US based companies are selling soft drinks , food products , 
medicines , drugs in third world countries , which are causing grave 
health damages to the public. The quality standards of these products 
are fit cases of rejections by US FDA. Some US companies are selling 
drugs ( which are banned in the USA ) to third world countries , still 
us companies are exporting such dangerous medicines , foods to third 
countries . no action by US government , why ? is it because you think 
that the lives of  non Americans are cheaper than Americans ? 
  
Hereby, I do request your kindself , 
  
1 . to initiate criminal prosecution against US based key management 
personnel responsible for Bhopal gas tragedy . 
  
2 . to make either the respective company management or US government 
to pay compensation to victims of Bhopal gas tragedy  on par with 
American lives , as if the same tragedy happened in the USA itself. 
  
3 . to order the management of the said company to clean up Bhopal off 
poisonous debris , from the accident site at their own expense. 
  
4 . To legally prosecute US exporters &  US based companies selling 
products  ( which violates US FDA regulations or banned in the USA for 
domestic consumption ) to third countries. 

 

Shame! India sold its dead cheap
Shobhan Saxena,  

Around 22,000 dead. More than 1,20,000 injured.  Rs 1 lakh for each body. Rs 25,000 for every poisoned lung and damaged heart and blinded eyes. 26 years of long wait. And just 2 years in jail for the men who committed the worst crime against the people of this country. And this mockery of justice after such a long wait. Twenty six years after 40 tonnes of lethal gas seeped into the lungs of Bhopal, families of some 17,000 men, women and children are still waiting for the so-called compensation. Thousands more are still waiting to be accepted as victims. People of Bhopal are still drinking toxic water poisoned by Union Carbide in December 1984. And the main culprit is living life kingsize in a mansion in New York. 

No country sells its people so cheap. 
No country sells its poor so cheap. 
No country sells its dead so cheap.

Today – on the day of Bhopal disaster judgment -- if there is a failed state in the world, it’s India. It’s not Iraq. It’s not Somalia. It’s not Sudan. It’s India.

India – its government, judiciary and corporates – accepted the ridiculous amount of $450 million dollars for the people killed and maimed by methyl isocyanate leaked from the Union Carbide factory in the heart of Bhopal three decades ago. In all these years, the poor victims have done everything they could to get justice and compensation. They have cried and died on streets, sat hungry and faced police lathis on roads and filed court cases in the hope that one day they will get justice. 

Today, they were denied justice. Today, they were told that they should be happy with the peanuts thrown at them by Union Carbide.  Today, India proved once again that it doesn’t care for its poor. Today, it was proved all over again that those who do politics in the name of poor in this country, always rule for the rich. 

What justification does CBI have for not being able to produce Warren Anderson in court. The chairman of UC at the time of the gas attack (it was not an accident, the gas leak was caused because of cost-cutting steps taken by him) on the people of Bhopal, Anderson was arrested and later released on bail. He ran off to US in 1986 and we have not been able to find him or ask the US to extradite Anderson to India. Why? The government says it doesn’t know where Anderson is. What a lie. What a shame. 

Last year, on a balmy July day, a bunch of victims danced on the streets after hearing news that the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal had ordered the CBI to arrest Anderson and produce him before the court without delay. The court also asked the CBI to explain what steps it had taken since 2002 to enforce the warrant and extradition of Anderson, who was declared an absconder in 1992. Though the CBI and US government failed to track Anderson, supporters of Bhopal victims traced him to the elite New York neighbourhood of the Hamptons. In 2003, Greenpeace activists paid Anderson a visit at his home and handed him an arrest warrant. 

Today’s ridiculous judgment in Bhopal didn’t say anything on Anderson as he is a “proclaimed offender”. This status suits him fine because he doesn’t have to bother about coming to India and answer some very crucial questions:

 *Why did Union Carbide not apply the same safety standards at its plant in India as it operated at a sister plant in West Virginia, US?

*On the night of the disaster, why did the six safety measures designed to prevent a gas leak fail to function? 

*Why was the safety siren, intended to alert the people living close to the factory, turned off?

The victims have always alleged that Bhopal happened because of negligence by the Union Carbide and that was caused by cost-cutting measures taken by Anderson. Is it because of this reason that Anderson has been 'hiding' in the US?

A criminal has a reason to hide, but what reason does our government have to let a mass murderer like Anderson go scot-free. Is it because he is an American? Can an American come to India kill people in this country and run away with no consequences? That seems to be the case. We are still struggling to get a chance to question David Headley Coleman, an American citizen responsible for the worst terror attack on an Indian city in 2008. Will we succeed in getting Headley extradited to India? No way. Never. 

Today, India proved that it doesn’t really care for its people, particularly if they have been slaughtered by powerful people from the most powerful nation in the world. Instead of taking on America and fighting for justice for its poor, India is more than happy to sell its dead cheap.  

Rs 1 lakh for every body. Rs 25,000 for every blinded eye. This is the cost of poor life in a failed state.

 

Bhopal gas tragedy: 8 found guilty, get bail

BHOPAL: The seven Indian Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL) officials convicted in the 26-year-old Bhopal gas tragedy case have been granted bail and released on submission of a surety of Rs 25,000 by a trial court in Bhopal, according to a Times Now report. 

Earlier on Monday, eight accused, one of whom is deceased, were sentenced to two years in prison for causing death due to negligence. 

Reacting to the development, representatives of the tragedy's victims and their families who have been protesting outside the court, said they would approach the Madhya Pradesh High Court to allow the slapping of more stringent charges against all those accused in the case. 

The Magistrate court in Bhopal on Monday convicted all eight Indians accused in the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy case. A Rs 500,000 fine has been imposed on UCIL. 

Toxic gas leak from a Union Carbide pesticide factory in 1984 killed thousands and left an unspecified number battered with diseases and deformity - the toll of victims is still rising. 

Despite Monday's conviction, there is little closure for victims. Legal experts have alleged that there was an attempt to cover up the case. It took the CBI three long years to file a chargesheet that many believed was weak. Then in 1996 the charges were watered down making all sections carry the maximum punishment of 2 years. 

The charges were also all bailable and with the prime accused in the case - former Union Carbide (USA) chairman Warren Anderson still on the run and unlikely to present himself in Indian court, there is little hope that justice will be served.

Anderson: The man who got away in Bhopal gas case
Chidanand Rajgahtta,

Long before British Petroleum, there was Union Carbide; long before David Headley aka Daood Gilani, there was Warren Anderson. 

As legal proceedings in the Bhopal gas tragedy meanders on, its torturous path over 26 years a travesty of justice to many, two principals associated with the disaster have faded from sight even as newer culprits in most recent outrages (BP oil spill and Mumbai's 26/11 massacre) are in the spotlight. 

Union Carbide, the American chemical company that became notorious for the world's worst industrial disaster, is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Company. And Warren Anderson, Union Carbide CEO, at the time of the disaster and until his retirement in 1986, declared an absconder and a fugitive from justice by an Indian court, lives in relative anonymity and seclusion in Long Island, New York. 

Both have washed their hands off the Bhopal disaster. Union Carbide says its officials were not part of this case since the charges were divided long ago into a separate case. "Furthermore, Union Carbide and its officials are not subject to the jurisdiction of the Indian court since they did not have any involvement in the operation of the plant, which was owned and operated by Union Carbide India Ltd, (UCIL)" a spokesman for the company told Wall Street Journal. 

The company maintains that the Bhopal plant was designed, owned, operated and managed on a day-to-day basis by UCIL and its employees and all those convicted are the "appropriate people from UCIL — officers and those who actually ran the plant on a daily basis have appeared to face charges." 

"I want you to know that Union Carbide continues to have the utmost respect and sympathy for the victims of the tragedy and their families. Union Carbide did all it could to help the victims and their families from Day 1 right up through the settlement with the Indian government," the spokesman added. 

Anderson isn't talking. He hasn't spoken on record on the subject for nearly two decades. Now nearing 90, he lives with his wife Lillian in a million-dollar home in the swish Long Island neighbourhood of Bridgehampton, avoiding social contact and hiding from the media and activists who have struggled long to bring him to justice. 

When Casey Harrell, a Greenpeace activist, visited his home in 2002 to serve him a warrant, he refused to identify himself and pretended to be someone else. 

A neighbour also tried to throw Harrell off-track saying he was someone else and blurting out that he had nothing to do with the Bhopal disaster (even though Harrell hadn't mentioned anything about the disaster). 

Bhopal gas case: SC shot down move to slap tough charges
Dhananjay Mahapatra ,


NEW DELHI: It will be unkind to blame the trial court for handing out mild punishments to the Bhopal gas leak accused whose collective negligence caused an industrial catastrophe. For, the court's decision to frame charges against them under Section 304-II of IPC — that attracts a maximum jail term of 10 years — was set aside by the Supreme Court itself on September 13, 1996. 

Appearing for CBI, then additional solicitor general Altaf Ahmed had argued before the SC that the accused knew about the potential danger of the lethal gas escaping and hence should be tried under the stringent provision. 

"There was ample material produced by the prosecution in support of the chargesheet which indicated that all the accused shared common criminal knowledge about potential danger of escape of the lethal gas — MIC — both on account of the defective plant which was operated under their control and supervision at Bhopal and also on account of the operational shortcomings detected by the Varadarajan expert committee," Ahmed had said in court. 

However, a bench comprising then Chief Justice A M Ahmedi and Justice S B Majmudar disagreed. "On our finding that the material pressed in service by the prosecution does not indicate even prima facie that the accused were guilty of an offence of culpable homicide and, therefore, Section 304-II was out of the picture, Section 304-A on this very finding can straightaway get attracted at least prima facie," the bench said. It then quashed the charge framed against the accused under Section 304-II. 

As legal experts decried Monday's verdict and activists involved in rehabilitation of the victims termed it a mockery of justice, TOI tracked down Altaf Ahmed in Dubai. Ahmed expressed disappointment, not with the trial court verdict but with the SC's 1996 judgment. 

"The dilution of the charges against the accused persons in 1996 by the Supreme Court was very sad and in my perception not justified," he said. 

And why did he feel so, when the SC had gone through the evidence and CBI's chargesheet in detail while giving its 40-page judgment? Ahmed felt the apex court had erred by converting the charges from Section 304-II to Section 304A (death caused by a rash and negligent act, under which the BMW hit-and-run accused was tried). "The management of Union Carbide knew that necessary safety measures were not in place and a leak of the kind that resulted in the tragedy was a distinct possibility," he said.


END 25 YEARS OF INJUSTICE TO PEOPLE OF BHOPAL 

 Shortly before midnight on 2 December 1984, thousands of tonnes of 
deadly chemicals leaked from Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in 
Bhopal, central India. Around half a million people were exposed. 
Between 7,000 and 10,000 people died in the immediate aftermath and a 
further 15,000 over the next 20 years. 
Nearly 25 years later, the factory site has not been cleaned up. More 
than 100,000 people continue to suffer from ongoing health problems. 
Efforts to provide rehabilitation – both medical care and measures to 
address the socio-economic effects of the leak – have fallen way short 
of what is needed. 
Many of those affected are still waiting for adequate compensation and 
the full facts of the leak and its impact have never been properly 
investigated. No one has ever been held to account for what happened 
at Bhopal and efforts by survivors’ organizations to use the Indian 
and US court systems to see justice done and gain adequate redress 
have so far been unsuccessful. 
Bhopal is not just a human rights tragedy from the last century – it 
is a human rights travesty today. The legacy of Bhopal persists 
because the people of Bhopal have never been able to claim their 
rights. Moreover, the negative impacts of the leak are affecting new 
generations. Studies have shown how the exposure to the toxic gas 
causes long-term effects, which can continue in children born in gas- 
exposed families. 
For 25 years the Indian government has failed the people of Bhopal. 
Promises have been repeatedly broken and no adequate action has ever 
been taken to address the impacts of the gas leak. 
No company can be allowed to evade responsibility for the impacts of 
its operations. Union Carbide must be held to account for what 
happened at Bhopal. Dow Chemicals, which now owns Union Carbide, must 
cooperate fully with the Indian government and the courts in India to 
ensure justice is done and the site is fully cleaned up. 
 BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY 1984 -Bhopal, India 

At the first instance the Government of India failed to ensure that 
Union carbide India Limited (U.C.I.L) has installed proper safety 
measures and fully implemented it in practice, at it's plant in 
Bhopal. The Government of Madhyapradesh through it's labour 
department, factory inspectorate & pollution control board failed to 
enforce safety practices & environmental protection. In turn, the 
U.C.I.L didn't install in full, the safety measures being followed by 
it's parent company union carbide corporation (U.C.C) at it's 
Various plants in the U.S.A. The U.C.I.L. didn't give community 
training to residents of nearby localities, to cope up with 
emergencies ie. Industrial accidents. U.C.I.L gave a go - by to safety 
practices, as it treated Indian lives as cheap. The government of 
Madhya pradesh instead of shifting slum dwellers around U.C.I.L, to 
other safe place, gave them legal title deeds just months before the 
tragedy in 1984. 
Now, refer the following:- 
1. After the accident at it's U.C.I.L. plant at Bhopal, India in 1984, 
when the U.C.C.  Chairman/C.E.O. came over to Bhopal from U.S.A to 
visit the accident site, local police arrested him on the charges of 
manslaughter. However, the Government of India got him released. 
2. In 1985, Government of India enacted "Bhopal claims Act" took- away 
the right of appeal of all the Gas tragedy victims & declared itself 
as the sole representative of all victims. This said act itself is 
violative of victim's fundamental & human rights. The 
victims didn't choose Government of India as it's representative under 
will, agreement, trust or pleasure. 
3. The paradox of this "Bhopal claims Act" is that, Government of 
India which is also a party to the crime, tragedy, itself is the 
appellant. The appellant (Petitioner),defendant are Government of 
India, Prosecution by Government of India & Judged by Government of 
India. 
4. In 1989, when an appeal about interim compensation to be paid by 
the U.C.I.L to all the victims was being heard in the apex court, the 
supreme court of India without giving a chance to the victims to make 
their point, without consulting them, without making a proper 
assessment of damages/losses, gave an arbitrary figure as verdict & 
dropped all civil, criminal proceedings against U.C.C.&U.C.I.L 
5. In the same year 1989, the Government of India without consulting 
the victims of disaster, without making proper assessment of damages/ 
losses, negotiated a settlement with the U.C.C. and in turn gave full 
legal immunity to U.C.C.& U.C.I.L from civil & 
Criminal proceedings 
6. Even the Government of India didn't present the case of victim's- 
gas tragedy victims, properly before the U.S.courts, where the U.C.C 
is based. All these premeditated acts only benefited the criminals- 
U.C.C&UCIL. Are not the supreme court of India & Government of India, 
here to safeguard Indians and to safeguard Justice? 
After all these crimes, the Government of India failed to distribute 
compensation in time to victims. It has failed even to provide safe 
drinking water to the residents near the accident site, It has failed 
to provide comprehensive medical care to the victims, till 
date . It has even failed to get the accident site cleared off toxic 
wastes either by the culprit management or by it self, that too after 
20 years. The very presence of these toxic wastes since 20 years is 
further contaminating, polluting the environment and taking toll of 
more victims. 
Particularly in the case of "Bhopal Gas Tragedy" the supreme court of 
India & Government of India are deadlier criminals than U.C.I.L&U.C.C. 
Just consider a case here, Just a few years back an U.S.based M.N.C 
ENRON set-up a power project in Maharashtra, India through it's 
subsidiary. When Maharashtra state Electricity Board failed to lift 
power from Enron& pay them monthly guaranteed revenue, Enron 
threatened to invoke, open the "Eschrew Clause" with the Government 
of India & to approach international arbiter U.K. Government of India 
has stood as conter-guarantee in this case. Finally the Government 
paid, of course subsequently the parent ENRON collapsed due to other 
reasons. If in this case if Government of India failed to pay-up as a 
counter guarantee & refused to comply with the award of International 
arbiter, definitely Government of U.S.A. would have stepped into the 
scene to protect it's MNC. Hypothetically, In the same vein if Enron 
has caused damages to Indians either through negligence of safe 
practices or industrial accidents or bank frauds 
amounting over and above it's Capital base & insurance cover, then it 
would have been the duty of parent Enron & Government of U.S.A. to 
step in & pay-up. 
In the same way, the U.C.I.L has caused massive damages to Indians & 
refusing to pay commensurate to damages. Dow chemicals which took- 
over U.C.C. is also refusing to pay. DOW chemicals which is the new 
owner of U.C.C. naturally inherits both profits, credits lent & 
liabilities to pay of U.C.C. Still it is refusing to pay. Now it is 
the turn of Government of U.S.A. to cough-up the sum. 
Nowadays, it has become routine for central & State ministers to go- 
on foreign jaunts, to globe -trott inviting F.D.I/ M.N.Cs to India. 
They do sign numerous agreements, only favouring MNC. When tragedies 
occur or when they cheat Indian banks/ investors, it is Indians who 
suffer. The ministers & bureaucrats thinks themselves as wizards and 
enters into agreements with MNCs, industrialists in a hush-hush 
manner, with vast scope for possible corruption. Is it not the duty of 
government to be transparent ? 
  

 

Bhopal gas case: ex-CBI men, Moily fight verbal war as Warren Anderson goes scot-free

 

New Delhi: Bhopal gas tragedy prime accused Warren Anderson’s failed extradition has kicked off a war of words between former CBI investigators and the law minister.

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Officers who probed the case but have now retired claim their hands were tied by government missives directing CBI not to pursue Anderson’s extradition.

In fact, the government had committed to the US that Anderson would not be arrested during his visit to Bhopal in the aftermath of the tragedy. Accordingly, he was allowed to return.

Former CBI joint director BR Lall, who briefly investigated the case, recalls receiving a letter from the ministry of external affairs to not pursue Anderson’s extradition.

“I distinctly remember receiving a routine letter which said Warren Anderson’s extradition may not be pursued. Normally, directions are not received through letters. It was a rare case,” he told DNA, making a case for greater autonomy to CBI.

“We [CBI] had responded to the letter that investigations required [Anderson’s] extradition,” Lall said.
His boss, former CBI jointdirector Joginder Singh, said there was little the agency could have done.

“CBI did its best to investigate the case fairly and push for Anderson’s extradition. But our hands were tied. In 1996, we got a major blow when the Supreme Court deleted criminal sections from the case.”

The CBI charge sheet mentioned section 304 IPC (culpable homicide with a maximum punishment of 10 years). However, the charges were watered down to 304 (a) (death due to negligence), usually used in cases of road accidents.

“With such a mild section, it is impossible to get an extradition anywhere. The moment 304 was quashed, half the case was lost,” Singh said.

Law minister Veerappa Moily refuted the allegations. Reacting sharply to Lall’s claims, he said, “After retirement people can give many statements. It is an irresponsible statement. This is not done at all. I think we need to do something to deal with such people who fail to discharge their duty and after retirement, try to become heroes or martyrs of the situation.”

 

New Delhi: A former senior CBI official, involved in the Bhopal gas leak case investigations, today claimed that the probe was "influenced", generating a strong reaction from law minister M Veerappa Moily who termed the remarks as "irresponsible."

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The officer, BR Lall, former joint director of the agency and in-charge of the probe also said he was forced by the ministry of external affairs officials not to follow extradition of Warren Anderson, the CEO of Union Carbide Corporation when the gas leak took place 26 years ago.

"CBI investigation was influenced and commanded by some officials, as a result the justice in the Bhopal Gas leakage case got delayed, hence, denied," said Lall, the CBI officer in charge of the investigation from April 1994 to July 1995.

However, Moily, while reacting to Lall's claim said, "After retirement, people can give many statement. It is an irresponsible statement. This is not done at all. After retirement, people become martyrs by making such statements."

Claiming that CBI was an "under command" organisation, Lall said, "We need to make it free from government control to
ensure transparency and fair probe. In other countries, all chief investigating agencies have been given autonomy by keeping it out of the control of the judiciary, bureaucracy and executive powers."

The charges by Lall came hours after a local court in Bhopal yesterday convicted former Union Carbide, India, chairman Keshub Mahindra and seven others for the world's worst industrial disaster, that left more than 15,000 dead on the intervening night of December 2-3 in 1984.

"I was told by the ministry of external affairs officials not to follow the extradition of Warren Anderson, which affected the CBI probe," Lall, who is now retired, further claimed.

After registering a case, CBI had filed its chargesheet under Section 304 IPC, which amounts to culpable homicide with maximum punishment of 10 years. However, the charges were later watered down to 304 (a), usually used in road accidents.

"I do not know what circumstances and evidences forced CBI or others involved in the proceedings to lower the section," he said.

However, MEA sources maintained that "in 2003, a request for extradition of Anderson was made to the US side under India-US bilateral extradition treaty. This request has already been reiterated on more than one occasion."

Anderson, 89, the then chairman of Union Carbide Corporation of USA, who lives in the United States, appeared to have gone scot-free for the present as he is still an absconder and did not subject himself to trial. There was no word about him in the judgement of the Bhopal court.

 

Anderson flew in, out of Bhopal in state govt's plane: Capt SH Ali

 

New Delhi: Claims that Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson had flown in and out of Bhopal in a state government plane was today strengthened by the aircraft's pilot.

''We got flight information from the then Director of Aviation R S Sodhi for a flight from Bhopal to Delhi and were told to keep the aircraft, a state government plane, ready,'' Captain Syed Hasan Ali claimed in an interview to a news channel.

Bhopal Gas: Centre reconstitutes GoM, MP govt to file appeal

He added that Anderson's identity was kept a secret from him. ''We did not know who he was,'' he said.

Capt Ali further claimed that Anderson was alone in the aircraft and looked upset and tired. ''As we waited for him, he came with the then SP and the District Magistrate of Bhopal. When we landed in Delhi, an ambassador picked him up from next to the plane and I left him with the airport manager,'' he claimed.

Anderson case not closed, he slipped because of CBI: Moily

Capt Sodhi, seconding the pilot's claims, said it was on orders of Arjun Singh government that Anderson was allowed to fly.

''I had received a call from the office of the then Chief Minister, Arjun Singh, ordering to arrange Anderson's departure on December 7, 1984,'' Captain R S Sodhi claimed in an interview to a news channel today.

Eight held guilty for Bhopal gas tragedy, get two years in jail

He alleged Anderson, a few hours after he came to know about his charges with culpable homicide, reached the airport where the Chief Minister's official plane stood waiting for him, along with senior bureaucrats and police officers.

The city's Superintendent of Police and the district magistrate, Moti Singh, waved to Anderson as he boarded Singh's plane, he said. Earlier, Moti Singh had also alleged that the then Chief Secretary of the state had called him to his room and told him to arrange for the flight of Anderson out of Bhopal.

''The then chairman Keshub Mahindra and UCIL's then managing director Vijay Gokhale after landing in Bhopal were taken into custody at the airport itself but soon after that, he and the district police chief were told by the Chief Secretary to get the US citizen released on bail and send him to Delhi by plane,'' he said.

 

 Bhopal gas tragedy : 'Rajiv Gandhi' helped Warren Anderson escape?

 

Courtesy : CNN-IBN. Warren Anderson, former chairman of the American parent company Union Carbide Corp responsible for the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, got out of India on the government’s order. Moti Singh, who was the District Collector of Bhopal at the time of gas leak from the Union Carbide plant, said this to CNN-IBN on Wednesday. He alleged Brahm Swaroop, Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh at the time, called him and the Superintendent of Police (SP) personally and asked him to release Anderson. Anderson was arrested on December 7 but he was released the same day and flew out of Bhopal in a state government plane to New Delhi, said Singh. SeveralUnion Carbide officials were arrested on December 7 and kept at the company guesthouse after the gas leak on December 1, which was declared a temporary police station. "At around 2 pm in the afternoon the Chief Secretary summoned me to his chamber in the Secretariat. We went there -- he (Chief Secretary) said Mr Anderson was to be released and sent to Delhi by plane which was awaiting him at the airport. We did legal formalities and Anderson was released on bail. He was put on the plane and he went to Delhi,” said Singh. The former official said he was never given reasons why Anderson was being released. Singh claimed Anderson wanted to visited areas affected by the gas leak but he was told there was a threat to his life. "He was reluctant to leave immediately. He said he wanted to see the affected areas and meet the people. I told him he was not welcome in Bhopal and that there was risk to his life and in no case he could be allowed to go to the affected areas.” The former district collector claimed Anderson seemed casual and showed “symptoms of arrogance” but toned down when he was told that he was being released. Singh recalls Anderson briefed him on how the deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas "leaks, how it works” and what wind direction it will take. Singh says Anderson’s information tallied with what was happening in the city. Anderson was charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, grievous assault and killing and poisoning human beings and animals due to leakage of the MIC gas from theUnion Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal. A Bhopal trial court on Monday convicted eight Indian officials of Union Carbide for their criminal negligence that triggered the world's worst industrial disaster, but Anderson was not mentioned in the judgment. Law Minister Veerappa Moily on Tuesday told CNN-IBN the “case” against Anderson was not closed and blamed a former Central Bureau of Investigation officer, who had investigated the gas leak, of not pressing for the American’s extradition.

 

 

Bhopal gas tragedy : Warren Anderson released after deleting a 'charge'

 

Three days after the Bhopal gas tragedy, the police here had released the then Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson and two others on bail by "deleting" in the complaint a stringent charge under the IPC against them, trial court sources said today.

A perusal of court documents shows that the in-charge of the Hanuman Ganj Police Station, Surender Singh, had initially arrested Anderson, then UCIL chairman Keshub Mahindra and senior company official Vijay Prakash Gokhale at 10.10 AM on December 7,1984 in the presence of one Rakesh Kumar under various sections of IPC including 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder).

They were also charged with sections 304 A (causing death by negligence), 278 (making atmosphere noxious to health), 284 (negligent conduct with respect to poisonous substance), 426 (mischief) and 429 (mischief by killing or maiming cattle, other animals).

Later, the police released the three, "deleting" the charge against them under Section 304, they said.

The sources said that police had no right to delete such a charge and in doing so they had exceeded their brief.

"If the charge had not been deleted, Anderson may not have been able to leave India," they said.

The CBI had later booked Mahindra and Gokhale under Section 304 which provides for prison term of 10 years. However, the Supreme Court had dropped the stringent section in the case.

Over 15,000 people were killed and thousands of others maimed when the deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984.

Date : June 11th, 2010. News by Newsofap.com

 

Bhopal gas tragedy: Justice Ahmadi offers resignation

 

Bhopal: Former Supreme Court Chief Justice AH Ahmadi, facing flak for the 1996 verdict in the Bhopal gas tragedy case, has offered to resign from the post of Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust chairman. 

Speaking to a daily, the former CJI said, “I will send a fresh application to the new Chief Justice of India asking to be relieved of the responsibility, though my previous application was pending with former CJI KG Balakrishnan.” 

Justifying his stand, Ahmadi said that he had not committed any impropriety by agreeing to head a multi-million dollar trust set up by the Union Carbide after the gas leak. 

Justice Ahmadi, who headed the bench in 1996 that converted the CBI charge under the stringent provisions of 304-II that provided for maximum of 10-year imprisonment to Section with two-year maximum imprisonment, said it was easy for people to talk and make allegations but judges have to work as per the system. 

A two-judge bench headed by then CJI Ahmadi reduced the charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder to causing death by negligence. 

Giving his clarifications on the judgment, Justice Ahmadi rejected criticism of dilution of charge against Union Carbide executives in Bhopal gas tragedy case, saying in criminal law there was no concept of vicarious liability. 

He also lamented the lack of a law to deal with disasters of Bhopal kind and said law can be amended to provide for adequate punishment. 

Few days back, an organisation of Bhopal gas victims disputed Justice Ahmadi's claim that no one had filed a review petition after the Supreme Court dropped charges of culpable homicide against the accused in the case. 

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"Our organisation had filed a review petition but that was dismissed in 1996 by the Supreme Court, which was then headed by Ahmadi himself," the convenor of Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangthan, Abdul Jabbar had said. 

As the guilty had not been charged under Section 304 of IPC (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), they were let off with imprisonment of only two years each, Jabbar claimed. 

Justice Ahmadi, who had delivered the Bhopal gas tragedy case verdict in on June 09 1996, said he could not recollect whether a review petition was filed. However, he had earlier stated in a television interview that no review petition was filed. 

Since retirement, Ahmadi has been presiding over Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust that runs a 350-bed superspeciality hospital. The trust was set up by Union Carbide. 

A total of Rs 600 crore has gone into the trust, but its accounts are not in the public domain. The trust deed mandates that an SC judge should be its chairman and Ahmadi has been at its helm since retirement.

 

Man Who Warned of Bhopal Gas Leak

 

Congress spokesman Satyvrat Chaturvedi has defended former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi [Images ] whose role in letting the guilty in the Bhopal gas tragedy get off lightly is under the scanner due to the public outcry over the recent judgment in the case -- 26 years after the event. On the night of 2/3 December, 1984, when deadly gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, Arjun Singh [ Images ] was chief minister of Madhya Pradesh [ Images ] and Gandhi was the prime minister of India [ Images ].

In the first few years after the tragedy, tremendous pressure was put up by the American corporate lobby and the government on India to save the US-based Union Carbide, the parent company, from civil and criminal liability.

As a result, at every little step, the law could not provide justice to the over 15,000 who died due to the gas leak. More than five lakh victims who suffered chronic diseases are struggling and pleading for help, even now.

The June 7 judgment of a local court in Bhopal, sentencing the convicted officials of the Indian arm of Union Carbide to a mere two-year sentence, has made the entire nation feel small and impotent before the might of the multinational corporations, the sluggish Indian justice system and its spineless political establishment.

The entire Bhopal saga was witnessed from close quarters by Rajkumar Keswani, an outstanding journalist, who had in fact foreseen this catastrophe. His work proves that the tragedy of Bhopal started much before December 3, 1984.

Two years before the Union Carbide factory leaked killer gas, he wrote in a weekly magazine called Rapat (news): 'Bhopal jwalamukhi ki kagaar par (Bhopal on the edge of a volcano)'.

Keswani has witnessed the entire saga of deception of the victims of Bhopal by the Indian and American governments and multinational corporations. He shares his agony in a telephonic interview with rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt.

You have been following the Bhopal gas leak case for 25 years. What was your first reaction on hearing the verdict on June 7?

I had no expectations on that day. The seed of this judgment was sown when a Supreme Court bench headed by then Chief Justice of India, A H Ahmadi, passed a judgment in 1996 that converted section 304 (II) (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the Indian penal code to 304-A (causing death by negligence) to try the case. In 1996 we knew the fate of the Bhopal gas case. He diluted the charges filed against Union Carbide. What happened was the culmination of injustice that started with that judgment.

Was there a design behind this?

I can't say how it was done. But surely there was some design. Eventually, after retirement, Justice Ahmadi became the lifetime chairman of the Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust and Research Centre which has funds worth millions of rupees. Those millions, paid by Union Carbide for the poor victims, are under his control even now.

The dilution of charges helped (UCC chairman) Warren Anderson and Union Carbide in a big way, right?

When we talk about Union Carbide and Anderson, we must remember that they have never ever been subject to Indian laws. They have never appeared before an Indian court, nor have they lost anything due to Bhopal or benefited by the June 7 judgment. Our country's system gave them eternal protection from any legal proceedings. There was no serious attempt at all to bring Anderson to this country in the last 25 years.

Can you tell us what kind of evidence you had against the US-based Union Carbide Corporation, parent company of Union Carbide India?   

I started working on this story in 1981. That was the time when my friend Mohammad Asharaf was working in Union Carbide India Limited. He died due to exposure to phosgene gas. I had an idea that some hazardous chemicals are being used in the Bhopal factory. I reported on his death and then worked for nine months on knowing about the factory. I reported my first story in September 1982. In October that year I ran a series and wrote weekly reports against Union Carbide and the possibility of risk to human lives due to the chemicals in the plant. People treated me like a crazy man. They used to tell me, 'Arre aisa kabhi hota hai kya? Aisa kabhi hua hai kya is duniya mein?' (Do things like this happen? Have such things happened anywhere in the world?)

People in government, who were in the know of things, were hand in glove with the management of Union Carbide. They would trust Union Carbide more than anything else. Union Carbide was the only multinational at that time in a small city like Bhopal. Their reputation was such that it was difficult for anyone to believe that they could be negligent. It was very disappointing for me.

But what kind of evidence did you have against UCC of the US?

In 1982, an audit team had visited Union Carbide in Bhopal. They had inspected the plant and said that certain safety measures must be taken, otherwise there could be a gas leak. I printed the report of the visit of the audit team and their observations in Jansatta before the 1984 gas leak.

At 15 places in that report, they had written that safety measures are not proper and it could have a 'runaway' reaction. So the plant had problems before the leak in 1984. There is enough proof. Second, UCC, USA said they were not involved in the day to day running of the plant so they could not be made responsible. There are telex messages as proof which shows that the company in USA was totally involved in all the decisions of the company in Bhopal. They were sending instructions to Bhopal.

UCC India had a works manager named J Mukund (one of the accused who was convicted on June 7). He had sent a message asking for advice about coating the pipes. The US-based parent company sent him a message saying that the best material for piping would be too expensive and too difficult to acquire. How can UCC, USA escape their responsibility when they were advising Bhopal to economise on safety measures? They were telling Bhopal to use cheaper material. They were advising it to compromise on safety. Mukund's message was sent on August 27, 1984. Just a few weeks before the fateful leak.

Do you have the copies of those telex exchanges?

Yes.

Justice Ahmadi, when he diluted the charges against the company, didn't see these telex messages?

He saw what he wanted to see. Actually, there was a review petition of his order but he rejected it. We had sent messages to all the members of Parliament at that time to press for a review of the dilution of charges against the company. There are hundreds of documents that suggest that the parent company was involved in the running of the Bhopal company and they were aware of the problems in the plant. I submitted all of it in a US court too.

In 1982, I had documents to prove that safety measures in the plant were faulty. I managed to raise the Union Carbide plant issue in the MP assembly. The government denied any such threat, it is on record. The government denied my report and said there is a fool-proof system in the factory and there is nothing to worry about. The government said all these things in defence of Union Carbide in December 1982! I wrote to the Chief Justice of India in 1982 to intervene in the Bhopal factory. Nobody cared. I got no response.

Who played the bigger game in the Bhopal 'cover-up'?

Union Carbide Corporation, USA, played the game with the help of the Government of India and the government of Madhya Pradesh. If you find out how the settlement of 1989 was reached, you will know what I am saying is correct. The settlement was done with the Supreme Court's sanction. Carbide agreed to pay Rs 705 crore and the Government of India agreed to drop all civil and criminal cases against Union Carbide, which was later challenged in the court. Who did this? It was Rajiv Gandhi who made this settlement possible. It was the ultimate shame that the Government of India accepted money for the victims to quash criminal proceedings against UCC.

I challenged it in the court with the help of Indira Jaising, my lawyer. Only after that petition was the criminal case revived in June 1989. Anyone can understand what the role of the Government of India has been in helping victims.   

It's very intriguing to see that after the Bhopal tragedy innumerable NGOs, from stalwarts like Indira Jaising to hundreds of local community leaders, fought for the victims but nothing came out of it. Why such a total failure?

This is a very serious question. I am also worried about it. I don't know if I should say anything on it.

But so much has been done by the foot soldiers of civil society. All over the world the victims have sympathisers. Still justice was not done. Why?

These are voices only. In society today only a loud bang is heard. That can be done by the television media. If the people would have reacted in a similar manner in 1996 to Justice Ahmadi's decision, the Bhopal verdict would have been different.

How do you look at the Bhopal judgment?

I think the judge in his wisdom has not spoken much on (UC India chairman) Keshub Mahindra's role. We have a grouse against it. It should be challenged. The Indian managers were equally responsible.

In Bhopal, during these 26 years, has Keshub Mahindra ever said sorry?

No. Rather, they have been manipulating the case. I have evidence to say so.

Who are the guilty men of Bhopal?

There is Union Carbide Company who compromised safety for profit. There was the Indian government who could not withstand the might of the multinationals. The cause of the tragedy was Union Carbide, but the injustice was due to the slow process of the judiciary and the Central Bureau of Investigation. The investigating agency became a partner in crime.

Who helped Anderson? Who executed the operation to get him out of India on December 7, 1984?

The American government and the US embassy put pressure on the Indian government. They put pressure on the Prime Minister's Office. Rajiv Gandhi, reportedly, asked Arun Singh to ensure Anderson's release. Chief Minister Arjun Singh didn't convey to New Delhi [ Images ] the popular sentiments on the ground in Bhopal.

We reported these things then. We have no recordings of it now but we reported though our sources.

You are fighting since 26 years but now you see all around that people are reacting sensitively. There is a feeling of anguish and frustration. How do you see the new-found interest in the Bhopal case?

This is due to the new media and the images on television. Yeh TV ka kamal hai. These days, we are dictated by images on TV. They make us cry and they make us laugh. It is good, and even bad sometimes. In the case of Bhopal tragedy it is good that TV is shaking our memories.

 

Police released Anderson after 'deleting' stringent charge

 

Three days after the Bhopal gas tragedy, the police here had released the then Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson and two others on bail by "deleting" in the complaint a stringent charge under the IPC against them, trial court sources said today.

A perusal of court documents shows that the in-charge of the Hanuman Ganj Police Station, Surender Singh, had initially arrested Anderson, then UCIL chairman Keshub Mahindra and senior company official Vijay Prakash Gokhale at 10.10 AM on December 7,1984 in the presence of one Rakesh Kumar under various sections of IPC including 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder).

They were also charged with sections 304 A (causing death by negligence), 278 (making atmosphere noxious to health), 284 (negligent conduct with respect to poisonous substance), 426 (mischief) and 429 (mischief by killing or maiming cattle, other animals).

Later, the police released the three, "deleting" the charge against them under Section 304, they said.

The sources said that police had no right to delete such a charge and in doing so they had exceeded their brief.

"If the charge had not been deleted, Anderson may not have been able to leave India," they said.

The CBI had later booked Mahindra and Gokhale under Section 304 which provides for prison term of 10 years. However, the Supreme Court had dropped the stringent section in the case.

Over 15,000 people were killed and thousands of others maimed when the deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984.

MP CM seeks explanation from Arjun Singh on how Anderson fled

New Delhi: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday said that his government will go to any extent to get justice for Bhopal gas victims and demanded an explanation from then Chief Minister Arjun Singh on how former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson fled the country.

"We will go to any extent to get justice for the victims...This is not an issue of Bhopal or the state. It should act as an example of how to give punishment in such cases," he told reporters here.

Noting that the people of the state felt "let down" following the gas tragedy verdict, Chouhan said he has written to Arjun Singh and asked for a reply on the circumstances that led to Anderson's escape.

"Let Arjun Singh explain it. Whether he did it (gave permission for providing state aircraft) himself or anybody told him to do so. We want a reply from him if a wrong direction was given. And after all, why such a direction was given.

"There are lot many questions like why the CBI filed no appeal when the charges in the case were diluted in 1997. If he gives a statement, things would be clear. The state and the country want to know these circumstances," he said.

Chouhan said a five-member team of legal experts has been set up by the state government to look into the issue and examine what could be done legally to get Bhopal gas victims justice. The interim report of the team would be out in the next ten days, he said.

Asked about the conflicting statements of Congress leaders like Digvijay Singh and Satyavrat Chaturvedi on Anderson fleeing the country, Chouhan said he did not want to politicise the issue but added that this was only leading to confusion.

"Somebody is saying the Centre is responsible while somebody else says the issues comes under the state. Different people are speaking in different voices...One wants to protect somebody while the other wants to trap someone else.

"This is leading to confusion... Arjun Singh should speak the truth. What other Congress leaders are speaking is only bringing out the contradictions within the Congress party," he said.

He said that his government is open to all options and will decide after the committee report on whether to constitute a probe commission go into the lapses or take up the issue with US courts.

CBI failed to act on warrant against Anderson last year

Bhopal: The trial court in the Bhopal gas tragedy case had issued an arrest warrant against former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson last year but the CBI had failed to give any written response to it, according to court sources.

They said the warrant, the second against Anderson, was issued by Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohan P Tiwari on July 2, 2009 but the CBI did not give any written response to it.

Anderson was the chairman of the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) at the time of the disaster in December 1984 which left over 15,000 people dead.

Instead, they said, a CBI official met Tiwari and orally conveyed to him that for the agency, Anderson's case had been closed.

The first court warrant against Anderson was issued in 1992.

Direction to release Anderson must have come from CM: Ex HS

New Delhi: Former Madhya Pradesh Home Secretary K S Sharma on Friday said that the then Chief Minister Arjun Singh may have given directions to officials to release former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson.

Sharma, who was the Home Secretary when the Bhopal gas tragedy took place, said the pressure to release Anderson must have come from the Chief Minister as "no officer would take such a step without direct instructions from the government".

"Right from the beginning there had been some soft approach towards the whole thing otherwise he (Anderson) would have not been kept in a guest house when he was in custody. Releasing an accused of such a heinous crime on the same day means there was a tremendous pressure," he said.

"...It is difficult to say from where this pressure came but certainly the pressure from Chief Minister on officials must have been there because no officer would take such a step without direct instructions from government."

Sharma claimed despite being the Home Secretary he was not kept in the loop and "not informed about Anderson's release."

To a question whether there was pressure on Arjun Singh, he said: "This is not known to me whether there was some pressure on Arjun Singh or not...I did not discuss with Chief Minister Arjun Singh. I really do not know.

"But he certainly gave (some) instructions because the Collector had said the Chief Secretary told him. The Chief Secretary should not have told him. The Chief Secretary should not have passed on these instructions without very strong instructions from the Chief Minister," he said.

He also questioned the Government's decision to keep Anderson in a guest house after his arrest and termed the grant of bail to him as illegal.

"It is certainly unusual. Although in a few cases it does happen but it is when the offence is not heinous and the person is respectable. But so far as this case is concerned, 15,000 persons have died and keeping accused in rest house was certainly, I would say, very unfortunate and shouldn't have been done," Sharma said.

"When the case, which was registered under Section 304 which is a non-bailable cognisable offence in which the bail can only be granted by Sessions court after the discussions and arguments by both sides. Therefore the grant of bail in my view was illegal," the former bureaucrat said.

"In a high profile case, in which so many persons died and somebody who had come from the US has been arrested and if he has been released same day on bail, not informing me or not keeping me in the loop, not consulting me was certainly not normal. In such cases the Home Secretary is always consulted."

Sharma said the then Bhopal Superintendent of Police had informed him about Anderson's arrest and he was not aware that he was released on bail.

"Whether there was pressure or not, I am not aware because till his release I was not in the loop. I was not consulted at all. So I have absolutely no information whether there was pressure to release," Sharma said.

Congress denies Rajiv had a role in Anderson escape

New Delhi: The Congress party on Friday strongly rejected a former prime ministerial aide P.C. Alexander's indication that the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi had helped Warren Anderson, the CEO of Union Carbide Corp in 1984, escape from the country within days of Bhopal gas tragedy.

Alexander reportedly stated that Gandhi and then Madhya Pradesh chief minister Arjun Singh were directly in touch with each other over the escape of Anderson from the country barely days after the world's biggest industrial disaster in Bhopal Dec 2-3, 1984. 

Congress spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan said there "is nothing unusual" in a prime minister and a chief minister being in constant touch with each other. 

She said the Group of Ministers for Bhopal gas tragedy would "gather all information and put it before the people".

 

Saving Democracy From The Corporate Veil

By Gopal Krishna

Five things the US should do to quell the global outrage after the recent verdict in the Bhopal gas leak case and provide some justice to the victims

The labour pains for giving birth to an understanding of a trans-national corporation, the scope of its civil and criminal liability, its corporate veil and the chemical disaster of Bhopal is still far from over. By now it is clear that unless US government decides to act no one else can get to the bottom of the most complex industrial catastrophe known to mankind in the 20th century. Without the helpful intervention by the US President Barack Obama, the litigation process will never be able to provide justice to the victims and penalise the natural and artificial culprits.

As democracies, like Indian government, is it time for US government too to act as parens patriae (guardian) for the past, present and future victims of Bhopal in particular and for justice seeking people of the world. The parens patriae doctrine which was deemed as a pioneering innovation in jurisprudence was invoked for the protection of all victims of disaster but was sabotaged.

While government of India enacted itself as parens patriae, Dow Chemicals Company (after Union Carbide's merger in 2001) and its agent in the government have enacted for themselves a similar role for the global community of the trans-national corporations against justice seeking victims.

The global outrage against such sabotage stage-managed under the guidance of US government that has become evident in the aftermath of the June 7 verdict merits President Obama's intervention to set matters right. Taking recourse to judicial escapism instead of acting to evolve a jurisprudence of liability for corporations gravely endangers people's trust in democracy everywhere.

The deafening silence of the US president and legislature to ensure justice to the victims of corporation engineered mass disaster if not broken would constitute "yet another instance of American imperialism" in the words of US Judge Keenan who heard the Bhopal case in New York district court.

Unaccountable and ungovernable corporations are a threat to all the democracies. If democracy in US and India is indeed non-negotiable, it merits global efforts to Dow Chemicals and Warren Anderson accountable. This is required to fix the liability of a trans-national corporation. In a historic and touching "extraordinary act a foreign sovereign government seeking justice in an American court", India had appealed to the democratic judicial system of US for relief in the matter of industrial disaster of Bhopal caused by a US multinational corporation. How democratic governments of US and India respond to provide legal remedy sets a precedent that either legitimises or delegitamises its very existence.

The government of India filed a suit on September 5, 1986 for damages in the court of district judge, Bhopal (Regular Civil Suit N. 113/86) against the US company, Union Carbide Corporation, Connecticut, USA on behalf of all the persons, who have suffered damages due to Bhopal gas leak disaster praying for "a decree for punitive damages in an amount sufficient to deter the defendant Union Carbide and other multinational corporations involved in similar business activities from willful, malicious and wanton disregard of the rights and safety of citizens of India." The Indian government noted in its reply in the court that Union Carbide's management policies, states that "it is the general policy of the corporation to secure and maintain effective management control of an affiliate."

If the US is indeed a democratic state, its constitution is still alive then it must make corporations like Dow Chemicals and British Petroleum liable and accountable for their acts of omission and commission. The following steps are required in US towards that end:

1. The US government should accept the above submission of the government of India that "the corporation and its subsidiaries are treated as a unit, without regard to the location of responsibility within that unit". Consequently, an illegal act by it be deemed as the act of the corporation, without consideration to its location of responsibility. The customary alibi of corporations like Dow Chemicals is an act in sophistry designed to conceal fact of crime and criminals of the upper-world. The US government should disclose all the trade secrets of the Union Carbide Corporation and its research and development centre that Union Carbide operated in Bhopal since 1976 that was suspected to be experimenting with wartime use of chemicals. This suspicion regarding the disaster being a consequence of experimenting with war time chemicals is yet to be probed. US government should undertake and facilitate such probe.

2. The US government must take note of the verdict by the chief judicial magistrate, Bhopal, wherein it is stated, "Warren Anderson, UCC USA and UCC Kowlnn Hong Kong are still absconding and therefore, every part of this case (criminal file) is kept intact along with the exhibited and un-exhibited documents and the property related to this case, in safe custody, till their appearance". In the interest of justice for the Bhopal victims, the US government should expedite the process of extraditing Anderson at the earliest.

3. Dow Chemicals Company has set aside $2.2 billion to address future asbestos-related liabilities arising out of the Union Carbide acquisition. How is that Dow Chemicals can take the asbestos liability of Union Carbide and not the liability for the industrial catastrophe in Bhopal? The US government should volunteer its assistance in ascertaining the Bhopal disaster's inherited liability of Dow Chemicals Company.

4. The US government should promote acceptance of the resolution of UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights that approved the 'UN norms on the responsibilities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights' as a step towards ensuring corporate accountability. Article 18 of the norms called on trans-national corporations and other business enterprises to make reparations for damage done through their failure to meet the standards spelled out: "Transnational corporations and other business enterprises shall provide prompt, effective and adequate reparation to those persons, entities and communities that have been adversely affected by failures to comply with these norms through, inter alia, reparations, restitution, compensation and rehabilitation for any damage done or property taken. In connection with determining damages, in regard to criminal sanctions, and in all other respects, these norms shall be applied by national courts and/or international tribunals, pursuant to national and international law."

5. In memory of victims of Bhopal, the US and Indian governments should call for a mandatory regime for regulating trans-national corporations unlike UN's voluntary global compact and reject the report of the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Representative for Business and Human Rights wherein it underlined the need for voluntary regulation and self compliance by the companies saying, "While corporations may be considered organs of society, they are specialised economic organs, not democratic public interest institutions.

If there is one lesson that democracies across the world have clearly not learnt from industrial disasters, it is to ascertain the nature of all the genocidal acts of corporations and the very legal design of the corporation so as to make it genuinely governable by democratic legislatures. A befitting tribute to victims of Bhopal lies in learning this lesson in order to prevent future industrial warfare that irreparably undermines intergenerational equity.

 

INDIA: Obama administration official supports corporate interests over victims of world's worst industrial disaster

Deputy National Security Advisor Froman reveals administration’s double standards on corporate accountability for victims of Bhopal Gas Disaster

At a time when the world is focused on corporate accountability in the wake of the BP's Gulf Oil Spill, a leaked email from the Obama administration shows that it values profit over people, when the profit benefits American corporations. The victims of the world’s worst industrial disaster were disappointed to see today that the White House is not pursuing the same levels of accountability from American Dow Chemical as it has from BP. When Dow purchased Union Carbide in 2001, the corporation acquired outstanding liability for the ongoing disaster in Bhopal, which has led to the deaths of an estimated 25,000 people in Bhopal, India following the 1984 Gas Disaster.

Today, Mumbai-based Times Now published an email chain between White House Deputy National Security Advisor Michael Froman, and Indian Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia. In response to an Ahluwalia’s email requesting assistance as India faces a sharp restriction in the World Bank’s lending, Froman replied:

"We are aware of this issue and we will look into it. We are hearing a lot of noise about the Dow Chemical issue. I trust that you are monitoring it carefully. I am not familiar with all the details, but I think we want to avoid developments which put a chilling effect on our investment relationship."

Here Obama’s Deputy NSA apparently tied potential development aid to India with Dow Chemical’s liability in Bhopal. The White House denies any linkage between the IBRD lending and Dow’s ongoing lack of responsibility. Forman’s statement shows callous disregard for ongoing injustice and lack of accountability 26 years after the disaster. The survivor organizations in India, 5 of which have been protesting in Delhi this past month, have faced infringements on their basic rights, especially through discriminatory police abuse. A threatening statement from the Obama office could further repressive action from Indian Central Government of India.

Following months of safety cuts, on Dec 3, 1984 the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal leaked deadly gas containing Methyl isocyanate (MIC) over the city ofBhopal. In the immediate aftermath 8-12,000 people died. Currently the death toll has risen to approximately 25,000 people. Over 100,000 people are still too sick to work because of long-term health disability.

The Indian Government has been forced to address the Bhopal issue in the recent months following a June 7 verdict convicting the officials of Union Carbide's former Indian subsidiary on charges of criminal negligence. The charges and sentence, equivalent to a traffic violation, enraged the Indian public, as did the fact the Union Carbide and its former CEO Warren Anderson have refused to appear in court to face charges of culpable homicide. Bhopal survivors say that Dow Chemical should not be allowed to continue doing business in India until its subsidiary appears in court and cleans up the site of the disaster.

The International Campaign for Justice for Bhopal (ICJB) is a coalition led by four survivor organizations along with environmental, social justice, progressive Indian, and human rights groups around the world. ICJB works to hold the Indian Government and Dow Chemical Corporation (the current owner of Union Carbide) accountable for the ongoing chemical disaster in Bhopal, India. It was set up to address the grave injustices suffered by the half million Bhopal Gas Disaster survivors. 

Bhopal and the BP Oil Spill: A Tale of Two Disasters

By Madhur Singh

As BP struggles to contain the damage the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has caused to the Gulf of Mexico and to the people whose livelihoods depend on its waters, a legal judgment in the worst industrial catastrophe in history highlights how wrong the aftermath of such disasters can go — not just in terms of a cleanup but in the matter of justice. It is a terrifying lesson in how a corporation can evade full responsibility for one of the most heinous accidents in human history.
On Monday, more than 25 years after 40 tons of highly toxic methyl isocyanate (MIC) was released from a Union Carbide plant in the central Indian city of Bhopal — killing thousands in a matter of hours and over years, rendering hundreds of thousands seriously ill and causing genetic defects in yet-to-be-born generations — a local court announced its verdict. It held eight former employees of Union Carbide India Ltd guilty of criminal negligence and sentenced seven of them to two years in prison and a fine of $2,100. (The eighth defendant died during the course of the 23-year trial.) The convicted former employees were out on bail — of just $500 each — in less than two hours. Union Carbide India, which no longer exists, was fined less than $11,000. (See the legacy of the Bhopal disaster.)
The judgments are likely to be appealed. Given the speed of the wheels of justice in India, the case is likely to outlast most of the Bhopal survivors and the accused. The most prominent name in the latter category is Warren Anderson, the American CEO of Union Carbide, the U.S. parent company. He is now 89 years old. Arrested by Indian police when he visited the disaster site, he was released on bail and flew out of the country. He continues to be a fugitive from Indian law and hence has not been tried. (He is believed to be living somewhere in New York state.) At the same time, no one has been assigned responsibility for cleaning upBhopal's ground zero, which researchers and activists say continues to leach toxic chemicals into the groundwater, used by thousands of families. (See TIME's 1984 cover story on the Bhopal disaster.)
The outcome of the case has ignited outrage and disbelief across India. No less than the Law Minister and a former Chief Justice have said justice has been delayed and denied. The Economic Times newspaper led its front page with the headline "After 25 Years, Another Tragedy Strikes Bhopal." "We are used to being let down," says Rachna Dhingra of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, her voice catching as she spoke to TIME by phone, "by our government ... now even the judiciary."
The letdowns have been serious and repeated — and apparently preordained because of decisions that facilitated the disaster itself. Investigations over the years have shown that the Bhopal plant design was faulty and that there was next to no emergency preparedness — issues that the parent company in the U.S.apparently knew about, according to the groups that conducted the studies. The company was operating in India with standards unacceptable in the U.S. (See pictures of the Gulf oil spill.)
The Indian government seemed to go out of its way to cushion the experience for Union Carbide. After first suing the company for $3.3 billion in 1985, New Delhiannounced an out-of-court settlement of $470 million in February 1989. Then a 1996 ruling by another Supreme Court judge watered down the charges against the accused from culpable homicide (with maximum punishment of 10 years' jail term) to criminal negligence (maximum sentence two years).
The various governments that have ruled India in the meantime have not taken on Union Carbide, which is now owned by Dow Chemical. Meanwhile, Keshub Mahindra, chairman of Union Carbide India Ltd at the time of the Bhopal disaster and now chairman of India's automobile giant Mahindra & Mahindra, was nominated for a civilian honor, the Padma Bhushan, in 2002. He had to decline in the face of widespread protests.
Although environmental legislation was ramped up in the wake of the Bhopal disaster, companies continue to operate in India in ways that severely — if not as dramatically — pollute the environment and impact people's health and livelihoods. Britain-based mining major Vedanta, for instance, has faced censure from Amnesty International for violating the human rights of communities in Orissa, where it operates bauxite mines. India continues to be the world's e-waste dump. Of late, the government, keen to attract foreign investment to its nascent nuclear energy market, has been pushing a bill to limit the liability of a nuclear-plant operator to $111 million. "We've learned nothing from Bhopal," says Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan. "There is a drive to attract foreign investment overwhelming all other considerations." Opposition parties have already demanded a rethink of the proposed legislation in the face of the Bhopal outcome. (See pictures of people protesting BP.)
There is still outrage that the U.S. refuses to extradite Warren Anderson to face criminal charges in India. New Delhi made the request in 2003, and it was refused the year after. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robert Blake, reacting to Monday's Bhopal verdict, said, "I don't expect this verdict to reopen any new inquiries or anything like that. On the contrary, we hope that this is going to help to bring closure." The Bhopal activists now plan to file a writ petition in the higher court to admit more charges against Union Carbide and Anderson, seeking an as-yet-unspecified figure for personal and property damages, health monitoring and cleanup of the site, which is likely to run into billions of dollars.
Indians point at the way the U.S. government is now confronting BP — holding it squarely responsible for the oil spill and accountable for all cleanup costs — as a stark contrast to the way their own government has dealt with Union Carbide. The hope in India is that U.S. courts will be more amenable to the requests of Bhopal's victims now that America has a huge environmental disaster in its own backyard. The Bhopal activists say the Indian government must join the case in the U.S. as a plaintiff (indeed, it owns the land on which the Union Carbide factory was located). "Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should be inspired by President Obama's recent commitment toward making BP pay every cent for its oil spill," says Satinath Sarangi of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action. "And the U.S. government must follow the same standards on corporate liability for U.S. corporations operating in India as it expects for corporations operating in the U.S."
See the world's top 10 environmental disasters.
See pictures of critters caught in the Gulf oil spill.

 

BP and Union Carbide:
Corporate Responsibility or Corporate Liability
by Mukesh Williams

Two momentous events separate in time and location have seared our consciousness—the British (Beyond) Petroleum Gulf Coast oil spill on April 20, 2010 and the American Union Carbide Bhopal Gas Tragedy in December 3, 1984. Twenty five years separate these two environmental and human disasters but the greed of big multinational corporations in connivance with state and central agencies still remains insatiable. With a keen eye on profit, big companies compromise safety standards, falsify data, overstate their strength, underestimate their drawbacks, bribe officials, lobby for protection and misinform the public. It is rather difficult to fuse ethical economic standards with ravenous profit-making schemes. Though oil and gas stink most multinational corporations love it.

The neo-classical model of economics has reduced our land and environment to a mere abstraction that can be exploited in terms of supply and demand without compunction. Big companies continue to wreck havoc on our human and natural systems devastating our lives in the name of human progress and development. At such moments we often wonder where is the fashionable concept called social corporate responsibility that is often taught as a philanthropic and ethical tool in business management departments to unsuspecting students. Corporate greed like all other forms of human greed need to be kept under strict check by international pay czars or up-to-date legislation based on global standards with teeth for swift punishment. Also the rhetoric of corporate companies must be separated from what they actually do, how long they do what they do, and what they hide. A constant monitoring system both on the part of governments and private groups must be effectively installed in collaboration with the media to thwart their nefarious activities and ulterior motives.

Union Carbide Bhopal Gas Tragedy 1984

Early this month the Indian Supreme Court passed a verdict indicting the American CEO of Union Carbide Warren Anderson who was allowed to escape to the United States twenty five years ago possibly with the connivance of either the state or central agencies in India. Now both the Congress government and state ministries are trying to escape their involvement in the murky plot. Who wanted the truth then? And who wants the truth now? The declassified CIA report of December 8, 1984 and recent revelations by the principal secretary of Rajiv Gandhi, P. C. Alexander, point to political intrigue involving both state and center in releasing Anderson. Now some leaders claim that the worsening law and order situation in Bhopal in the wake of the accident forced Chief Minister Arjun Singh to provide a safe corridor to Anderson out of the country. Some like Rajinder Puri even see the direct hand of Rajeev Gandhi himself. It seems that US President Ronald Reagan phoned Rajeev Gandhi to release Anderson. The media would like us to believe that even P. Chidambaram and Kamal Nath were campaigning for Dow Chemical to get special concessions so it could invest in India. The chief minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi criticized Sonia Gandhi for the complicity of the Congress Party in the murky affair but it has come to light that he had signed an MOU between state public sector company Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Ltd and Dow Chemicals in April 2008. This is the case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Seemingly neither the American nor the Indian establishments saw the industrial disaster as the responsibility of the MNC Union Carbide. The company was bought by Dow Chemical Company in 1999 further camouflaging accountability. Dow Chemical was the second biggest Texas polluting company in 2009 and paid 1.14 million USD on eight counts of pollution. Now it is investing again in India with the syrupy connivance of people in power.

Even after 25 years the public would like to know if it was Arjun Singh the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh or influential persons in Rajiv Gandhi’s government at the center or the prime minister himself responsible for giving a free passage to Anderson to fly back to the U.S. India has an extradition treaty with the United States and under changed circumstances today when America itself is suffering from another MNC BP, there might be possibility of bringing the fugitive CEO back to justice if India can put together enough evidence. Greenpeace believes that in the 1982 safety audit of the Bhopal factory in the US addressed thirty safety hazards. Anderson knew about them and compromised safety standards causing the death of 20,000 people and affecting 578,000 to date. To make the tragedy reprehensible the out of court settlement made Union Carbide pay a sum of 470 million USD instead of 3.5 billion initially demanded, with each victim getting a measly sum of 550 USD in 1989. In the same year Exxon oil spill in Prince William Sound Alaska forced the company to pay 5 billion USD of which it paid half. Even today there is 425 tons of hazardous waste in Bhopal left by Union Carbide that needs to be cleaned. Who will do it—Dow Chemical or the Indian state government?

Anderson now 90 years lives in a luxury home worth 900,000 USD at 929 Ocean Road, Bridgehampton, Long Island, New York. He is now less of a fugitive and more of a monarch (Sonnenfeld, 1991). It is obvious that in many cases justice delayed is justice denied. Should we stop big companies from doing business? Should we impose heavy penalty on erring foreign companies? Or should we reform the slow and cumbrous judicial system? Jeremy Kahn writing in The Faster Times calls for judicial reform rather than protectionism (Kahn, 2010). The Indian Parliament is debating a law capping liability for foreign nuclear power companies involved in disasters to pay 100 million USD a pittance when compared to the US demand of 100 billion USD from BP. Then Indian law capping liability lacks teeth and may not cover non-nuclear companies. So they can pollute as of before.

British or Beyond Petroleum 

The British are desperate to save BP from going down by bringing silly arguments like BP has been a part of America since it merged with American energy Amoco in 1998 and acquired the Gulf of Mexico drilling rights (The Independent, “Cameron Warns Obama over Criticizing BP” 13 June 2010). The new British Prime Minister David Cameron has also chipped in underscoring the sustained “economic importance” of BP to both Britain and America. American President Barrack Obama however is needled by US senators, whose states have been ravaged by oil spills, to push for 100 billion USD compensation, which if realized would force BP to go bankrupt. The British media believes that Obama’s anti-British rhetoric is testing Anglo-American relations. Obama claims that American relation with Britain has not been affected. The environmental disaster caused by a British multinational company should have nothing to do with national identity but corporate liability. Obama has called BP the Swedish Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, who earns a fat cat salary of 3.8 million USD, to the White House for consultations.

The British are cut up with Obama’s off the cuff remark that he would have fired BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward if the latter had worked for him. With US pressure rising BP may not pay its quarterly dividends which are essential to maintain equilibrium for UK pension funds. The 6.7% shares lunge in the FTSE has adversely affected pension funds in the UK. If the status quo is not altered by American pressure groups BP might only have to pay 20 to 37 billion USD provided it can be proved that BP failed to meet safety regulations in the deep sea oil drilling.

Now BP is using two kinds of dispersants manufactured by Nalco—Corexit 9500 and Corexit EC 9527A. Corexit (deodorized kerosene) is banned in the United Kingdom as even 2.61 ppm can kill 50% of fish in 96 hours. The dispersants turn the oil slick into small particulates which settle on the sea bed and make things look clean on the surface, but they destroy marine life below. Corexit however is on the approved list of dispersants by the US Environmental Protection Agency though the EPA has advised BP to use less toxic dispersants. BP however refused citing lack of availability. The toxicity of the present dispersants increase when they get mixed with oil. BP has links with Nalco. BPs has poured 1,621,000 gallons of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico to contain the oil spill and has ordered for an additional 805,000 gallons. The ill effects of the dispersant on humans can result in various diseases, reduced growth, kidney failure and death.

The British rely on BP as the national icon and savior of British deficit. Last year BP paid 1.4 billion dollars in taxes on its profits. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is too far away for the ordinary Britons but the pension funds and BP dividends are closer home.

It stands to logic that a “large, wealthy company” which is eager to pay 1.8 billion quarterly dividends to its shareholders and whose last year’s sales and operating revenues were 239 billion USD, should pay 100 billion USD in damages. Since the oil spill began on April 22, 2010 till June 15, 2010, 55 days have gone by. And if we estimate the oil spill at 50,000 barrels a day it comes to 27500000 gallons. If each gallon spill is fined 4300 USD as the US is suggesting the actual fine would come to 118,250,000,000 that is about 118 billion USD. These figures may not be exact and are vigorously contested by BP which would like to work with half the numbers. However the end is not in sight. According to BP officials it would not be before August that the spill can be contained. If this is true then the figure could be doubled and BP would have to pay damages amounting to all the revenue it earned through sales last year.

Both the American government and public are hopeful that since earlier erring companies like Texaco was forced into bankruptcy in 1987 after paying 10.53 billion USD claim, BP too would have to cough up huge sums. And BP’s reputation does not help a wee bit whatever they claim to the contrary in those daily briefings on the Internet. BP is known as one of the “ten worst corporations” in the world when evaluated on their environmental pollution and infringement of their human rights record. It also has the dubious distinction of being the most polluting company in the United States vis-à-vis EPA toxic release data of 1991. It has been fined 1.7 million USD for burning polluted gases at its Ohio refinery. It also paid 10 million USD fine to the EPA in July 2000 for mismanaging the US oil refineries. The US Public Interest Research Group or PIRG claims that between Jan 1997 and March 1998, BP was involved in 104 oil spills. Obviously a lot of wealthy shareholders, 37% on the British and 31 % on the American side do not want this to happen.

BP’s propaganda regarding its CSR is highly effective as it tries to highlight only the positive aspects of what it has done. In the past BP has invested some money in alternate fuel and green technologies but it has been criticized for proving private funds to public universities of the California Bay Area and closing down its green technology office in London. Its critics call its green technology projects as green washing projects. BP is also a leading producer of solar panels and holds 20% of the global market in this area and it uses this fact to great advantage for image building. It operates the ampm convenience store chain in the US and other countries and is the leading producer of wind power. It is also involved in funding local and international politics. It gave 5 million USD to democrats and republicans in 1990 and spent 16 million USD in lobbing at the US Congress. The moral of the story is that it is not as clean as it claims, nor concerned with the lives of common people unless it serves its purpose or national interest.

BP in its regional spill plan for the Gulf of Mexico and site plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig understated the dangers and overstated its preparedness in the eventuality of a leak. Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal criticized BP for being ‘reactive’ and not ‘proactive’ from the very beginning. Now BP’s report is examined quite critically and it has been discovered that an expert professor listed in its 2009 response plan died in 2005. It lists walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals as “sensitive biological resources” when none inhabit the Gulf of Mexico. Also names and phone numbers of marine specialists and marine network officers in Louisiana and Florida are not correct. The Justice Department has to find evidence that BP destroyed key documents or lied to the government (The Daily Yomiuri, June 11, 2010).

Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility is one of the modern movements like environmental or tribal movements that have become the buzz word in both business and academic circles. Both businessmen and academics are cashing upon the divine benefits of CSR making more money for their companies and jobs for their departments. Middle level managers and professors have extolled about the virtues of CSR with other buzz words such as people friendly, eco friendly and sustainable. We have come to hear about the unselfishly egalitarian aspects of CSR. It is really a wondrous transformation of the greed-driven capitalist economy of which the corporate system is a byproduct.

Most critics of CSR are not against it per se but against the recent hype associated with it as a panacea of all corporate evils. It is hard to believe that companies are out there not to make profit. We are not talking of basket cases but any company worth its salt aggressively markets itself to make real profit. And what’s wrong in it. Companies are floated for this very purpose both by the shareholders and managers. But in a changed climate of political advocacy of human rights against corporate greed, CSR seems to a new combative tool for companies to be both politically correct and make money as usual. The problem however is that if business corporations give an inch they take a mile.


Definitions and Objections to CSR

In the United States CSR is seen as philanthropy while others see it as improving society, workforce and government. There are arguments in favor of CSR where it is believed that it can support the social fabric of society and promote responsible business practices. But CSR is usually presented as a marketing strategy that articulates business performance rather than encompass social and ethical standards. The recent collapse of American business and manufacturing sectors has revealed the gap between CSR and actual self-regulation. Some CSR models take the company beyond the law into providing public benefits, increase sales, market shares, brand position, retain employees, reduce operating costs and increase investments (Baron, 2001 7-45). There are models of CSR that take into account competitive advantage, positioning, commitment, organizational integration, shareholder’s cooperation and self-correction. CSR helps to create a positive image of a company and brings it rich dividends. Though there are many definitions of CSR we must see CSR as the way business companies conduct their core business not the sops they give to society.

A common objection leveled against CSR comes from the advocates of the laissez faire system who complain that CSR infringes upon the human rights of company shareholders as company managers unilaterally divert company resources to society in the name of better management (Sternberg, 1999). Detractors of CSR complain that there should be a stakeholder claim in CSR as to how it is done. A business corporation should be fair and honest to both the shareholders and customers. CSR therefore depends on the model a company chooses and the reasons for its choice. If a company uses CSR for image building through philanthropy it leads to both ethical and human rights problems. You cannot give away money which ultimately belongs to someone else. On the flipside it also follows that if stakeholders possess sole rights they also should bear full responsibility when there are environmental or social disasters. However if a CSR model seeks a consensus of both stakeholders and company managers then it must become more open to the public. CSR must concentrate upon building customer relationships, attracting talented people, conducting risk management and building the company’s reputation.

Corporate Reputation and CSR

Corporate business companies such as BP or Coca Cola cannot ignore their reputation as about 90 to 95 percent of their assets are intangibles and the remainder immovable property. Big companies such as General Electric, IBM or Motorola use the rhetoric of CSR to show public responsibility and environmental concerns but while conducting hard-nosed bullying business practices are not so transparent in their dealings. A few years ago Sir John Browne of BP was praised for his aggressive promotion of BP while providing environmental leadership but now we come to know that all along BP compromised on safety costs in oil drilling. This is happening in a powerful country like the United States where both politics and laws are strong. Had it happened in a developing or a poor country, things would have been quite different. BP would have gotten away cheaply and Union Carbide once did.

CSR invariably works for companies and countries with resources and political clout. It is not for companies which are small and weak. Small companies fight for survival, cut costs to make ends meet and do not possess precious resources to waste on CSR. Nor can they follow up on legal battles if they come under the scanner. They function in a world of poverty, deprivation and loss.

Conclusion

It is no longer tenable to follow neo-classical economics of Smith, Mill and Bacon that the world is made for us and for us alone. We must eschew the economic theories of Pareto and Hayek as we can no longer treat nature as a mere variable and commodity. Depreciation of ecological assets has taken place at an increasing fast rate. Economics should no longer be about inflation, economic value of goods or maximization of income. It should take into account our natural world as property that belongs to every one of us (McNeill, Padua, Rangarajan, 2010 1-3). We must learn new lessons from ecological economics and environmental history and change the way we do business. We must rein in corporate greed by modifying corporate social responsibility (CSR) to corporate legal liability (CLL) and connect it to governmental deterrence, legal action and international treaties to scare the hell out of the merchants of greed and death who have many supporters in different parts of the world.

 

America's Corrupt Legal System - A Danger to All

by Dr Les Sachs

The tragic reality of the world's biggest corrupt legal system -America's rigged courts, bribed judges, fake and phony trials, extortion by lawyers, and over 2 million prisoners in the USA gulag. Why USA "justice" is not like in Hollywood movies, and why YOU could be the next victim on USA territory - innocent and sent to prison, or strapped to a table and put to death; or robbed of your life savings by American lawyers. Why YOU can be tortured, have your freedom and rights taken away, and why people in America are afraid to help you, or even tell what happened to you. The recent pattern of American violations of international law are ultimately based in the corruption of the USA domestic legal system. Phony USA courts are very dangerous even for travellers and visitors to America, who can easily wind up among the USA's more than 2 million prisoners, or lose all their family's possessions to corrupt American lawyers. All world citizens should know how the corrupt USA legal system, is a danger to every traveller, visitor, and guest worker from overseas, and to every individual who takes the risky step of entering upon American territory. Just ask the overseas families of prisoners who were put to death inside the USA, with their embassies never even being informed that they were arrested - or the many foreign people serving hugely long prison terms in America, after they were jailed on flimsy tainted "evidence" from criminal snitches. The reality is that the United States of America, which proclaims itself the "land of freedom", has the most dishonest, dangerous and crooked legal system of any developed nation. Legal corruption is covering America like a blanket. The corruption of the USA legal system is well-known, but also well-hidden, by the news services of America's corporate-owned media. The US media companies are afraid both of reprisal, and of the social revolution that would come from exposing the truth. Here is what the US media companies know, but are afraid to tell you about American "justice".

Concentration camps with concrete walls 

America has the largest prison gulag in the entire world - yes, right there in the USA, the self-proclaimed "land of freedom". The starting point for understanding anything about the USA, is to digest the fact that just this one country, the United States of America, has twenty-five percent of ALL of the prisoners in the entire world.

More than 2 million prisoners - more than 1 out of every 150 people in America - are behind bars in the American gulag. This is now the world's biggest system of what are effectively concentration camps, though most of these prisoners are behind masonry walls and inside prison buildings.

For minorities, the statistics are even more brutal. For example, the USA is now imprisoning about 1 out of every 36 people in its black population. American "justice" is especially focused on jailing young black males.

Quite amazingly, Americans and the American government, continually criticize the legal systems and so-called "political" legal proceedings in other countries such as China, Russia, and even Belgium among many other places. Yet, for example, the proportion of prisoners is 30 times higher in the USA than in China, even though China is a country regularly criticized and denounced by the USA government.

No one imprisons people as readily, or casually, as does America. As you learn more about America's horrifying legal system, you find out how easily and carelessly America arrests people, and tosses innocent people into prison. It is estimated that America has at least 100,000 completely innocent people in jail, but the statistics of innocence may well run far higher. The number of people known to be innocent, and yet who were actually sentenced to death in recent years in America, is already running into the hundreds.

The USA jailing of more than 2 million people is also, quite literally, a revival of slavery and slave labor, on a scale not seen since the days of the Nazis. USA business corporations are using these prisoners as a giant slave labor pool. Prisoners are forced to produce goods and products while earning mere pennies per hour, which they sometimes have to pay back to the prison for their own upkeep. The expanding system of USA prison slave labor is not only a major source of business profit, but also a wedge to drive down the wages of workers outside the prison walls.

This USA policy, of using mass casual imprisonment as a way to revive slavery, is targeted particularly at minorities, but ends up affecting all working people. Supervised by malicious judges and corrupt lawyers, this culture of mass prisons and slave labor is sold to the citizens by creating a psychology of fear among USA residents. This climate of fear is nourished in the USA by both the media and the government, who work together with the judges and lawyers to maintain the whole crooked game.

Of America's more than 2 million prisoners, about 50,000 are known to be foreign citizens. This proportion might seem small, but remember that 50,000 prisoners is more than the entire prison population of many other countries. It only appears as a small percentage, because of America's obsession with jailing its own people, who have had more time to get caught in America's web of legal horror.

The USA is extremely casual about the jailing of foreigners, and not honouring their rights under international law or treaties and agreements. Often, foreign citizens have been sentenced to death, while the USA didn't even bother to notify the foreign government that their citizens were arrested.  Several other governments are working hard just to try and obtain even the most primitive judicial rights for their own nationals, who have been seized and held in abusive conditions by the USA empire. And yet, the United States of America somehow still brags about its own legal system, while criticizing other countries. Understanding that America has such a huge percentage of even its own people in prison, is to start to understand the subconscious fear behind much of American life. Before you set foot in America, you should have a clear picture of the terror of America's legal system - the judges and lawyers and money and bribery, that have made this system of fear so pervasive. There is not yet enough public media information about America's domestic legal horrors, horrors which have been rapidly increasing. And the American public, even the victims of its legal system, have a hard time realizing why it is so hard to fight legal corruption there. The situation is so bad, that a social explosion is beginning inside America. You can read some news stories - about people murdering judges, or attacking the families of judges, or people setting fire to courthouses in the USA - and see the pattern that is emerging, even though the news media are afraid to connect the dots and suggest what might be behind all these events. America is trying to maintain its myths about its legal system, even while the desperate reality of life inside the USA is starting to blow back into escalating social upheaval.


USA torture and illegal jailing overseas, starts with USA domestic torture and illegal jailing at home

The world press has documented clear violations of human and legal rights by America in its overseas jails, such as the infamous situations in Guantanamo and occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, and the even more secret network of prisons in places like Diego Garcia or on board American ships.

But the problem is much bigger, than America's legal abuses under its military invasions and "war on terrorism". These USA violations of international law, are consistent with the corruption in America's home legal system within its own borders, and have partly evolved from America's legal abuses against its own citizens and residents.

American prisons are often horrible, with lots of torment of prisoners, like you would expect in some petty dictatorship. Conditions are brutal in USA jails; rape and beatings are common, and there is little help for abused inmates. In addition to the many official USA executions, numerous people are also illegally killed in jail cells, "mysteriously" said to have hanged themselves or "found stabbed to death".

Scandals of overseas prison abuse, as in the USA-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, have arisen from sources much deeper than America's foreign policy. These scandals are in part replications of inmate abuse inside of America's domestic prison gulag. Without diminishing the brutality of the crimes committed by Americans in Iraqi prisons, it is also true that such crimes are consistent with the brutality of prisons inside America.

In the regular functioning of the USA courts, America's domestic lawyers and judges, threaten people with illegal jailing, and rape, torture and murder in jail, just like the threats used by Americans against Iraqi subjects of the American occupation. America will play the song about "just a few bad apples in the barrel" whenever an abuse scandal gets exposed, either domestically or abroad, but the cover-up of such abuse is more the routine response.

Theoretically, torture and abuse is totally outlawed by America's Constitution, but some of the nice words in America's Constitution hold little power anymore, despite how often people quote them. The Americans who still believe the Constitution protects them, are mostly those people who haven't yet dealt with the judges and lawyers of America's corrupt legal system.

America's Constitution and Bill of Rights are nearly dead, not just because the judges will no longer enforce them, but even more because America's lawyers will not even fight for them. The two American "political parties" are not fighting for them, either, and America's news media are also very passive. If you look at America in depth, you can see there has been a widespread moral collapse in America's legal and political structures. This means that America's legal system has become largely a tool of government terror, and of bribery for the rich and the powerful. The average person is just fodder for the meat-grinder of America's courts.

America's lies and sleazy arguments to make excuses for torture, or to deny people the rights of the Geneva convention, or holding people for many years without charges, are also just an extension of the deviousness in America's domestic legal system. Inside America, neither its laws nor its Constitution nor the facts nor evidence nor anything else, no longer have real authority inside the American courts.
All that's left is what American lawyers and judges call "the game". As part of playing this game, USA lawyers and judges just twist words around, in order to produce any excuse, however flimsy, to achieve their objective, whether that be to jail an innocent person, or give the verdict that was sought by the big company that paid the big bribe through its law firm.

It is an endlessly devious manipulation of words and phrases to get the desired result, just devious falsehood and lies backed by the naked power of the judges. The only "real" part is the power that the judges and lawyers hold in America, to jail you and take away your property. The words of the law don't protect you in the USA, because American judges and lawyers have no scruples about bending them to mean the opposite of what they say.


America's lawyers are controlled by the judges, and don't really work for you - that's why they sell you out to the government, or to the big companies that pay bribes

There's some very special aspects about the way American lawyers are controlled by American judges, which is central to why America's legal corruption is so much worse than any other advanced nation. Even if you are paying an American lawyer huge amounts of money, he or she doesn't really work for you, and in fact may sell you down the river to the jailhouse.

American lawyers are directly under the thumb of the judges and the government, and must submit to the culture of bribery and perversion of justice, or else face terrifying revenge. Lawyers, just like you, can be instantly jailed by an American judge on flimsy pretexts, and American lawyers can be quickly stripped of their right to practice law, and personally and financially destroyed, if they dare to criticize legal corruption. Lawyers who try to fight the system can find themselves not only dis-barred, but also criminally charged and jailed, and no other lawyer will help them. It is a horribly crooked system in America.

This is different from other advanced countries, where lawyers are usually a professional guild, whose status and right to practice law, is under the control of only their fellow lawyers. This means that, in other countries, the judges and the government cannot easily ruin or attack the lawyers for purely political reasons. This is also part of why, in other developed countries, outside of America, you really do see brave lawyers fighting for un-popular clients, or challenging the government, and asking for justice.

But in America, it's different. Over the past century, the American lawyers lost the right to regulate themselves, and instead fell under the power of the judges. So American lawyers are afraid to do things in court, that the judges don't want them to do. America's army of nearly 1 million lawyers, is almost totally under the control of a few thousand judges, with their entrenched culture of bribery and fraud and miscarriage of justice.

Some USA lawyers don't like this, but they are helpless and can't fight it. Most lawyers in America have, to one degree or another, signed up with the devil, to do things the way the devil wants them done.

That means that any time you hire an American lawyer, he already is in a conflict of interest. He has to make the judge happy first. And if the judge wants to make the government happy, or make somebody else happy who is paying a big bribe, then guess what? You are destroyed. It doesn't matter what you paid the lawyer. He works for the judge, first and foremost. So a totally unique factor in USA legal corruption is the amazingly dishonest profession of American lawyers, these lawyers who "play the game" with America’s judges and politicians and police. It is a savage culture of legal fraud, where lawyers work with judges to rob and terrify people, especially minorities, but also foreigners, and above all those who dare to question the system. People accused of serious crimes have the "right" to a lawyer, but this may mean only a crooked lawyer who is stage-managing the victim to help the government and prosecutors. If the lawyer does not help the government, he can be put out of work and not "assigned" to any more cases, or treated badly the next time he is in a courtroom. This legal fraud is the core of the danger to those who visit America. A lawyer who is "representing" you in the USA, whether the government is paying him, or even if you are paying him yourself, may just be a stooge who is helping the prosecutors to put you in jail, even though you are innocent. The judges of America gave every accused criminal the "right" to a lawyer, not because they cared about the rights of the accused, but because it helps stage-manage the victim, with a lawyer who has to do things the judge's way. In America, such government-appointed lawyers are the means by which hundreds of thousands of poor people are railroaded into prison. Some of these people were just foreign tourists, in the wrong place at the wrong time, and wound up rotting in an American prison. Some lawyers are fairly subtle about it, and their victims never realize the lawyer has sold them out to the judge and the government. Most American court cases never go to trial, never see a jury; it is the job of the victim's lawyer to "sell the deal" that the judge has decided will happen, or else. This is how people accept a "plea bargain" so they accept going to jail for 3 years even though they are innocent, instead of going to trial before a jury. Because of the corruption of lawyers under the thumb of the judges, there's a very fake and phony aspect of court proceedings in America. They are really fake "show trials" in many cases, sometimes very obviously so, where both purported "sides" of lawyers are actually working together for the government, or for the big corporation or rich person that is bribing the judge.

You will also find, in the American legal system, that you essentially have no recourse whatsoever against wrongdoing by your own lawyer. A lawyer can sell you out, betray you, steal your money, engage in malpractice, help out the other side, hide the evidence that proved you were right, or commit felony crime against you, and there is nothing you can do about it, so long as the lawyer made the judge happy, and the judge got his cut of any money the lawyer stole from you.


Innocent and being arrested - they don't like to admit a mistake in America

Yes, lots of people live their whole lives in America and never get arrested. And yet, some poor foreign visitor comes to America for a short holiday, gets arrested by mistake, and gets sentenced to death by lethal injection even though he is totally innocent. Well, that's the lottery of life for those who visit or live in America. The police and prosecutors in America have no concern at all whether they have arrested someone who is innocent. They just don't care. When a crime is committed, they try to arrest somebody, anybody, just to say they got the bad guy. And they never like to admit they made a mistake. Once they arrest you, they will try to make up and plant false evidence, to help try and convict you. A common trick is to take other criminals they know, who are facing jail on other charges, and get those criminals to be false witnesses against you. The cops justify this kind of thing by saying to themselves, "Well, if you didn't commit this crime, you probably committed some other crime we don't know about." If they do arrest you in America, they like to pile on all sorts of criminal charges. The idea is to charge you with 10 crimes, because it makes you sound bad, and maybe convict you on 3 of them or you will accept a plea bargain on 1 or 2 of them. Any kind of guilty plea, and they call it a success, even though you were totally innocent.

For the police and prosecutors, it's all a kind of sporting game, so they can bring about their "high conviction rate". Perhaps part of the reason America has so much crime, even with more than 2 million people in prison, is because the people who actually committed the crimes were never arrested. Also, some poor people may feel that the odds are high they will be arrested someday anyway, so they may as well be criminals and enjoy life in the meantime.

The system is extremely racist, of course, and white people are arrested less than many minorities. But no one is safe. Any innocent person can get railroaded to death in America.


Multi-millionaires and big corporations, vs. everybody else

The only people who really can get expect some fairness in American courts are multi-millionaires and big corporations. Nobody else really matters to American judges and lawyers.

There is a huge amount of bribery in America, perhaps even more than in the courts of any other country in the world. Even some American ex-judges have admitted the near-universality of bribery there. Nearly all bribes are given to the judges by lawyers; this is considered the safe way to bribe a judge. Bribery is rarely spoken about, just understood. Rich people pay huge amounts of money to law firms with connections, the lawyers walk around with a certain amount of cash in their jacket, and they pass it to the judges in their quiet moments together. It is mostly all cash of course. Sometimes the bribery is blatantly obvious, because of the other crimes that lawyers and judges commit in broad daylight together. In the courtrooms you can see the judges being extremely friendly to their rich lawyer friends who pay big bribes.

As an average person, there's no real way to out-bribe a big corporation, regardless of what your lawyer promised you. That's why the big companies win so often.

American judges are very devious, and use all sorts of techniques to prevent a victim from getting justice. Lots of judges issue gag orders, and bans on freedom of speech, to help prevent other people from finding out what is going on. Judges set up a trial in all sorts of ways, giving orders that all sorts of evidence be hidden from a jury, for example. The judge may declare, for example, that the evidence that proves you are innocent or right, will not be allowed at the trial.

Jury trials are actually very rare in America, unlike what you see in the movies. Most cases are settled through some deal or extortion or intimidation, before there is an actual trial. If there is a jury trial, they tend to stack the jury with un-educated idiots who will tend to believe whatever lies they are told by the judge and the government. If you are trying to fight a rich person in court, the judge might let the fancy lawyers for the rich person say anything they want, while he tells you to shut up as soon as you start talking. The judges have a thousand ways to rig a legal proceeding, to benefit rich people or the government.
It's no wonder so many innocent people go to prison. With the fundamental brutality and harshness of life in America, American citizens are confused and fearful, and gullible to propaganda. So, a jury in a courtroom, these people who tend to be poorly educated, will tend to go along with any lies presented by government prosecutors. In this environment of fear, the feeling of safety for the jury, comes from following the "strong" government in sending various "suspected criminals" to jail.

Yes, there are appeals courts, but these are just more judges, who are often friends with the lower court judge who originally sold you out. The appeals judges tend to go along with the lower court judge, unless you have suddenly acquired some politically powerful backing on your side.

Americans love to talk about "taking it all the way to the Supreme Court!", but this is a nearly empty hope. The U.S. Supreme Court simply refuses to consider most cases that are presented to it.
If you are a little helpless nobody, the appeals judges often barely reply to you, and sometimes don't reply at all. Sometimes people have been strapped to a table and given the lethal poison and put to death in America, with the victim's appeal never even answered by the judges.


What about when people win millions of dollars in a lawsuit against the big company?

Every now and then, there is worldwide news of how some average person in America has won a lawsuit for $25 million or some other huge sum of money, from some company or other. What's going on here - if the American legal system is so crooked, how can people be winning such big money?

Such cases are indeed real, but they are actually somewhat rare, numerically - rather like winning the lottery - and it's important to see why they take place, and how they fit into the big pattern. Such cases are typically after someone has been seriously injured or died due to some defective product or prescription drug or hospital treatment or accident.

These cases have a certain "place" in the American legal framework, accepted by the judges. They are also very important for maintaining the bribery culture. A lot of the money won in such cases goes into the lawyer's pockets, and is a major source of bribery money for the judges. As regards big companies and the judges, such cases are viewed as a kind of "tax" on the big corporations, part of the cost of doing business in America, part of the price of being able to otherwise make huge profits.

Such cases, as well, have the same function as in a gambling casino, when the casino proudly announces that one customer has just won a huge jackpot. The hype about the one jackpot winner, hides the fact that most everyone else is losing money. The person whose husband died from the defective prescription drug, and won millions of dollars (one-third of that to the lawyer, of course), is the person who is shoved forward to prove that "the legal system works - it's the greatest legal system in the world!"

The small handful of such personal-injury cases, are intended to distract the public from all the innocent people sentenced to prison, from all the families destroyed by bribed judges in divorce cases, and from all the people whose lives are destroyed by big companies, companies who cheerfully pay bribes to win their routine cases in court.
Big companies know that some big "injury" cases will be lost, in order to supply money for the lawyers and judges who otherwise take good care of the big company's interests. When you are making hundreds of millions of dollars, the loss of a few million here and there is just another expense of business. In the end, the companies just raise their prices to cover the costs of lawyers and lawsuits. The whole world pays for the millions earned by American lawyers, they are the ultimate parasites.

There are other casualties here, too. America's health care system has been destroyed from the inside by the legal culture of constant lawsuits against doctors and hospitals, with huge amounts of money being given to the lawyers in these cases, driving up the cost of medical care and putting it out of reach of many people. America is the only economically advanced nation without a national health plan, with tens of millions of Americans having no health coverage. USA lawyers joke openly about how, when the courts make big money awards to pay a lawyer, the lawyer often gives the judge a bribe by way of gratitude. Some lawyers grow rich, and doctors are afraid to continue  practicing medicine in the US, and many Americans die from lack of health care.
But while America's lawyers will very casually file legal charges against doctors, hospitals, or ordinary people, for any flimsy reason, to try and squeeze some money from the situation, they are extremely afraid to take any legal action against another lawyer or judge engaged in misconduct. That's where fear takes over, and lawyers are suddenly too timid to file any lawsuits.


The Hollywood image, versus the grim reality

Once you have digested the fact that America has the world's largest prison gulag, another major thing to digest is the USA government, and much of America, is primarily a sales organization, whose chief tool is hype and propaganda and outright lies. America is a culture built on sales and advertising; it focuses on portraying an image, not the reality beneath it.

This is why America was so casual about inventing and selling the lies about "weapons of mass destruction" to help start the Iraq invasion. It was just a question of whatever lies needed to be told, in order to sell the product; there was no concern about afterwards, when the lies were exposed. America just figures it can later send out more salespeople with more lies, in an endless cycle. Tomorrow is just another day, when America will try to sell another product, the "war on terror", the "spread of freedom", or whatever.
The selling never stops, in Washington or Hollywood. America sells political lies like Hollywood sells movies. When the USA President talks about "advancing the cause of freedom", he basically means freedom for big corporations to do business. He's not really talking about actual personal freedom for real people. But he grins when he talks about "freedom" because it's a good word of salesmanship, people hear him and some of them can be duped into believing that America cares about personal or political freedom. Hollywood movies and American television are a major element of political myth-making. Around the world, people derive an image of America, and its legal system, from these fictional creations on film. America's propaganda about having "the greatest legal system in the world" is one of those phony stories that Hollywood is helping to sell.
It is also a myth sustained by the few trials about which there is a lot of publicity, like with the celebrity trials of Martha Stewart or Michael Jackson. Judges behave very differently when the cameras are rolling, or the media is reporting everything that goes on, and millions of dollars are being spent on lawyers. But in the 98 percent of court activity that does not have big media coverage, the judges of America provide a bizarre sideshow of horror.

In the Hollywood version, the judges in American courts are like kind uncles, smiling and being wise and calmly dispensing justice. But in reality, American judges sometimes scream at people like disturbed perverts, and show off their bribed corruption right there in the courtroom. Sometimes judges engage in flagrant extortion, where you have to agree to pay money to the judge's lawyer friends as the price to stay out of jail. It is really that bad. You can find no end of documented horror about American judges behaving like criminal lunatics, and it is getting worse all the time.

In the Hollywood version, there are brave lawyers who will fight for your rights, to win justice for you in the American courts. In reality, you can't find an American lawyer brave enough to fight judicial corruption, even if you are innocent and the judge's friends have threatened to murder you, or to send you to jail for the rest of your life. The lawyers who used to be brave, were destroyed or intimidated, and nearly all American lawyers now submit themselves to the culture of corruption and bribery, and betraying and abandoning the people who need legal help.

In the sad reality, American lawyers line up by the dozen to help the government or the big corporations, and regularly betray the average person, even if they are supposedly representing you. Even the lawyers who don't want to be wicked themselves, are too timid to really fight the system. At a certain point, nearly all American lawyers will hold back and abandon their clients, because they are trying to survive themselves and avoid revenge by the judges. In the Hollywood version, the average person is also helped by the "brave investigative reporter" at some newspaper or television station, who shows great courage in exposing the truth, and bringing powerful wrongdoing to face justice. However, the brave "investigative reporter" in America is now as fictional and non-existent as the "brave lawyer" who will fight for your rights. This is especially true on any topic pertaining to corruption by judges and lawyers.

In America today, reporters are little timid people who are afraid of getting fired, and who almost never write a story on government corruption, unless some other part of the government is officially investigating or prosecuting. That goes triple when judges or lawyers are involved. The owners of the newspapers and television stations are afraid of revenge by the judges if they have to go to court, and the nervous little reporters who work for them understand the rules of the game. If you look closely at a modern newspaper or news magazine in the USA, you will see how almost all stories originate with the government itself. When the media "investigates", they are usually just adding more details on a situation already being targeted by the government. Every news media and television station in America is swamped with people begging them to report on stories, that they totally refuse to cover. The reporters are too scared, and they know the stories wouldn't get printed or broadcast even if they were written. America is the land of fear, as regards the legal system and the culture of corruption. Everyone involved with the USA legal system is afraid, very afraid, of stepping on the wrong toes. Even American judges themselves get driven out of office, if they don't participate in the bribery culture.


No recourse against crime and fraud by judges and lawyers in America

In reality, there is almost nothing you can do against misconduct, and even open felony crime, committed against you by American judges and lawyers. All of the official complaint procedures you find on the internet, or at the courthouse or in the law books, turn out to be a joke, a farce and a fraud.
Complaints about lawyers in America, usually go to the "Bar", which is itself run by the judges who are involved in bribery with the lawyers. And complaints about judges go to other judges, their friends. Nearly all the complaints about lawyers and judges - tens of thousands of them - are kept secret. Nearly all are dismissed or ignored. They are generally only used if the judges or politicians want to specially destroy someone - some radical minority lawyer, someone who is not playing the bribery game, somebody who has dared to expose wrongdoing. Otherwise, even criminal acts by lawyers and judges get a smiling cover-up.

You will almost certainly not find any lawyers to help you sue another lawyer for wrongdoing. They are too scared of revenge by the judges. Even the lawyers who are broke and unemployed and desperate for work, are too scared to sue another lawyer. (Special caution: Lawyers may make false promises to you about suing another lawyer, cash your checks and steal your money, and then refuse to help you. And then you will have another lawyer who wronged you.) The police and FBI almost certainly will not help you, either. They all know the bribery game, and they rely on the same crooked judges to help send innocent people to prison after they have been arrested. The more crooked the judge, the more eager the judge will be, to help the police or FBI do a dirty deal and convict an innocent person. And, of course, the newspapers and television and media won't help you. They hear stories like yours all the time. If they publish or broadcast your story, then they will have problems the next time they get sued in court. Or they might find themselves arrested on false charges, and end up in an even worse situation than you.

The newspapers are so tied into the establishment of judges and lawyers, that the newspapers sometimes help the judges and lawyers to commit their crimes, and to unfairly smear and attack their victims. The big media newspapers have even helped to plant false "evidence" in court cases, and help the legal establishment to destroy innocent people. But even if not harming you, the USA media is afraid to help you, afraid of revenge if they expose judicial corruption. These fears are just as big, if not bigger, with America's radical and alternative media, and bloggers and internet sites. Such people will criticize American foreign policy and so on, but everybody is scared of talking about specific cases of corruption by lawyers and judges. The independent media has even more reason to be afraid, because they are even more vulnerable if the lawyers start to file false charges against them in the courts.

Of course, America's politicians will not help you, either. Many politicians are themselves lawyers, very used to the whole game of bribery with judges and other lawyers. The politicians accept the crooked courts as the way that America is run, and as helping the two big parties to monopolize the political scene and prevent alternative political movements. America's two big political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, can be seen as another phony game like America's courts. The two parties actually get their hundreds of millions of dollars in money from the same people at the same big corporations who own the rest of America. These two American parties pretend to argue with each other over emotional issues like gun control and abortion rights, but in the end both of these parties serve the big corporations. Half of Americans are still fooled into thinking that these parties represent them, the other half sense it is phony but feel helpless and don't know what to do. This is why people don't vote very much in America; they feel it is hopeless and useless.

You can also forget about America's human rights and civil liberties groups, even though it looks, at first, like there are many such groups on the internet. Many such groups are just money-raising groups which don't help victims, or are tied to the two main political parties or some narrow agenda. They are all scared of the legal system, too, and there is no one with any significant funding or money, who is out there helping the victims of legal corruption. They can't find lawyers to help them, either. There are some overwhelmed and struggling projects here and there, doing worthy work for a few of the innocent people in prison, but they function in an environment of timidity and fear, and without the resources or clout or media access to expose or change what is happening. It's getting worse and worse in America all the time. As the judges and lawyers can get away with committing crimes, they are getting more open and blatant, committing felony crimes in broad daylight, because they know no one will stop them or bring them to account. It is also important to know, that once you have started complaining about, or exposing, judicial and legal corruption in America, you become a kind of outlaw there. You are in a very dangerous situation, and you are considered fair game to be either arrested and jailed on false charges, or to be totally robbed and betrayed by America's lawyers. Once you have spoken out about legal corruption, you may find that no other lawyer will then help you for any reason, even if it is un-related to your complaint about judicial wrongdoing. You may be trapped in a nightmare from which there is no escape unless you can leave America altogether.


Dealing with American lawyers, if you have no other choice

Perhaps the statistical chance of getting arrested in America as an innocent person, and then being sent to prison or put to death, is relatively small. But think of how you will feel if you end up as one of those 2 million American prisoners, including 50,000 foreign citizens. Or perhaps even one of those several thousand people on Death Row, waiting for the lethal poison to be injected into your arm.

Visiting America now, is probably similar to visiting or doing business in 1936 with Hitler's Reich, or Mussolini's fascist empire. If you did such a thing in 1936, you might have visited and had a wonderful time, maybe even have done some business with companies in those countries. You might have seen some beautiful sights, and met some very friendly individual people, perhaps drunk a beer or two, or a nice glass of wine, maybe attended the 1936 Olympics. Very likely, you wouldn't have seen any concentration camps, in the places where you travelled. You might have had a very pleasant trip.
But nonetheless, you were in a dangerous place, where horrible things were going on. That's true of the United States of America today, the land of 2 million prisoners in a giant gulag. With America's corrupt legal system, it's certainly not the wisest place to keep money or assets, which can be easily grabbed by American lawyers in legal proceedings. Many smart Americans have opened overseas bank accounts, and it is wise to not keep too much money where American lawyers can seize it. There is no bigger group of thieves in the world, than American lawyers.

If you are in a lawsuit situation in America, get all your money out of the country, fast, before the USA lawyers can put any kind of hold or freeze on it. But you shouldn't keep substantial assets in the USA in the first place. Sell any USA real estate and rent instead, get that money out where it is safe.  Certainly, don't ever expect any justice from American courts. Expect the judges and both sides of lawyers to tilt toward the government, or toward the big company that can pay bribes on a regular basis. All that most people get out of American courts, is grief, and lawyers stealing their money. Best not to approach American courts unless absolutely necessary. Despite the commonplace fraud and dishonesty of American lawyers, it's still important to have one if you must be in an American court. The reason is that American judges absolutely hate people who come to court without lawyers, especially if they have any money at all. The judge takes it as a personal insult if you are not giving some money to one of his lawyer friends, and will tend to take revenge on you unless you hire a lawyer, even a very stupid one, to stand by your side.

What American lawyers love to do, is to steal all your money, tell you a bunch of false promises and lies, and then do nothing for you, while they sell you out to the other side. That is a perfect scenario for an American lawyer. A lawyer's goal is to squeeze as much money from you, while at the same time doing as little as possible to rock the judge's political boat. Some lawyers even make money by the "research and review" scam, where they don't even agree to represent you, but just steal your money to "research" your case.

Accept in advance that an American lawyer will rob you and betray you, and everything will go more smoothly if you quietly understand this. Never actually trust an American lawyer, but don't let on that you know he's a crook. Don't tell the lawyer how much money you really have, he will try to get all of it. Try to pay a lawyer very slowly, in small chunks, that will keep him more interested, and prevent some of the bigger robberies and betrayals, and will leave you some money to try another lawyer if things get too awful. Remember, once you give a USA lawyer any money, it's almost impossible to get it back. Lawyers will almost never sue another lawyer, and if you go to court, the judge will almost certainly protect the lawyer who defrauded you (and get a share of the money, of course). Lawyers and judges in America like people to appear to be submissive and stupid and easily manipulated. They like to feel superior to you. By letting them think that you are weak and falling for their lies, you may give yourself some breathing room. This tactic has even enabled some people to stay alive and not get murdered, and to escape from America back to safety.


The growing American nightmare

It is just getting worse and worse in America's legal system. For some years now, the USA judges and lawyers have gotten used to denying people justice, to the great flow of bribery money, and even to committing felony crimes in broad daylight and getting away with it. It just keeps on escalating. Though a social explosion is lurking beneath the surface - with judges starting to get murdered, and people lighting courthouses ablaze - the people who run America are letting the current system chug along as it is, justice be damned, and to hell with the people who seem to have no way to fight back.
It can't go on like this forever, but it may get a lot worse first, despite the fair internet visibility on documented American legal corruption. One should note a brave and promising grass-roots attempt at judicial reform in the USA called (Jail 4 Judges - www.jail4judges.org), which attempts to place onto American ballots, a referendum for a new procedure to give citizens a real right of redress against corrupt judges. It is a wonderful and beautiful idea that deserves success, and will help transform America if it moves forward. Regrettably, though, for all the usual reasons of fear, there is no one with any big money or media clout, yet making a foray against the real-life nightmare of America's courts and prisons. It remains a taboo subject for the American media, and the media silence feeds and encourages the whole machine of bribery and repression.

Perhaps, though, it will not be until after America has had a major economic or social cataclysm, that the big American machine of legal corruption finally comes to be reformed. Sociologically speaking, it's astonishing how disgraceful American lawyers have become - they are now both the mafia and the gestapo of American life. America's lawyers, as a whole, have had little to say about America’s recent international crimes of prisoner abuse, and violation of international human rights agreements. American lawyers, as always nowadays, are "playing the game" with America's government and its judges. America, indeed, does not have the rule of law at all. Instead, it is just the rule of lawyers, lawyers who crave money and power. And, in America, it can be jail or worse for anyone who tries to fight these lawyers. The reality of the United States of America is that Americans, despite their overall wealth as a nation, are now a people living in a society of great fear. Their fears are complicated, and many Americans cannot even put their fears into words. They are afraid of lawyers and the prison system, afraid of losing their jobs in a brutal society with no social safety net, afraid of needing health care in a disastrous system with no health plan. And Americans are afraid of what will happen if they try to question the system and the way things work. They often feel helpless and powerless against the great forces dominating their country. American citizens are confused and fearful, and gullible to propaganda. Because Americans have difficulty in sorting out their many fears, they have become ripe candidates for racial and religious hatreds, and for following their government into war. The issues of "terrorism" and war distract the emotions of Americans from the terrible problems in their own society at home. The foreign "enemy" gives Americans a face on which to project their fear and their anger. The result is the horrifying misconduct of some Americans in these wars; while back inside the USA, there is increasing corruption and repression in the legal system. Americans desperately would like to believe that they still live in a "free" country, as it is so horrifying to them to face the ugly truth, that their freedom is already largely lost. Americans can imagine they are "free" because they can still choose among different products to buy, or quit their job, or buy a gun at the store. And the Americans most likely to imagine they are still "free" are the ones who have not yet been trapped in the halls of America’s legal system. They have not yet seen the lawyers and judges who smirk and laugh as they deny victims the most basic human rights. The truth is that, inside America, a nightmare has begun. The lawyers and judges and courts, "playing the game", regularly trample upon the freedoms that Americans thought they had. It is people like myself, escaped from the USA, living in kinder and gentler places, who are now the lucky ones. No one should ever again be fooled by USA propaganda about being the "land of freedom". Those who are thinking of travelling to, visiting, or working in America, should think again. It might not be worth the risk of being in a country that has one of the most crooked legal systems in the world.

 

 

Edited, printed , published owned by NAGARAJA.M.R. @ # LIG-2  No  761,HUDCO FIRST STAGE ,

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