It was one of the worst industrial disasters in history that killed thousands and a US corporation - Union Carbide Corp. (now owned by Dow Chemical) - was responsible for it. Many of you may not have heard of it because unlike the Gulf Coast oil spill it didn’t happen on US ground or seas.  It happened in India. And it happened 25 years ago.

But for all of us growing up in India in the 1980s and 1990s the Bhopal gas tragdey is a familiar horror.

In the early hours of December 3, 1984 an explosion in a faulty tank at the Union Carbide India Limited’s pesticide plant in the city of Bhopal in the Indian state Madhya Pradesh released an immense toxic cloud of methyl isocyanate and other poisonous gases that silently spread across the city exposing over 500,000 people. An estimated 3,000 people were killed instantly. Another 6,000 died a week later and over the next few months the death toll from exposure grew to at least 15,000 (since no official count of casualties was ever recorded, toll estimates vary from 15,000 to 20,000). More than half a million people suffered permanent health damages. To this day, toxic 390 tons of toxic chemicals left lying at the abandoned plant site continues to leach into the groundwater affecting the health of thousands of Bhopal residents. Activists are now seeking to get Dow Chemical Company, which bought Union Carbide Corp in 2001, to clean up the site.

Over the years this particular tragedy has been exacerbated by failures of India’s judicial and administrative system as well as Union Carbide (and then Dow Chemical’s) efforts to shirk responsibility. As Journalist Raghu Karnard wrote in an detailed article in the Indian investigative magazine Tehelka:

“After 1984, the Carbide management had only one thing on its mind: to get out of India before its liability was fully calculated. This required them, on the one hand, to restrict proof of the extent of damage and, on the other, to unload assets as fast as possible. They did both ruthlessly. For example, Carbide refused to disclose proprietary research that would help doctors understand the physiological effects of gas exposure and treat victims. It disrupted independent research on drugs like sodium thiosulphate, which would have helped detoxify victims but would also have proved that the gas entered the bloodstream and caused multiple- organ damage.”

Why am I writing about all this now?

Because after a quarter century, yesterday (June 7) a court in India finally sentenced seven former Union Carbide officials (all Indians) accused in the case to a mere two years’ of imprisonment, pretty much excusing the company of all criminal liabilities. And if that weren’t an outrageous enough mockery of justice, all seven were then released on bail. Activists in India are calling the judgment “the third Bhopal disaster” (the second being a $470 million out-of-court settlement with the victims back in 1989  that freed Union Carbide of all civil liabilities. When divvied up, the victims got about $550 each).

“The verdict will only serve to embolden companies to compromise on safety and play with the lives of the poor,” said Satinath Sarangi of Bhopal Group for Action and Information, a nonprofit representing the survivors. One of the world’s biggest industrial disaster had been reduced to “something like a traffic accident,” he said.

Worse still, the prime accused in the case - former Union Carbide (USA) chairman and US citizen Warren Anderson - got away since he wasn’t even around to be tried. Anderson, who’s now 89 and lives in New York, was arrested when he came to India a few days after the disaster, but he skipped bail and fled back to the US. He continued to serve as Union Carbide’s CEO until he retired in 1986. Indian investigators say Anderson had been aware all along of the Bhopal plant’s faulty design and unsafe operations.

The US has rejected India’s request to extradite Anderson on the grounds that the request didn’t “meet requirements of certain provisions” of the bilateral extradition treaty between the two countries. Yesterday, US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robert Blake dismissed the  possibility of re-opening the Union Carbide case and said the US hoped the verdict was “going to help bring some closure to the victims and their families.”

Closure? I’m astounded and deeply offended at the callousness of Blake’s remark. For the families of victims and those still suffering from the effects of the gas leak, the verdict only reinforces their sense of injustice. The disappointment and anger among survivors and groups fighting for their rights is palpable even across the World Wide Web. My mailbox has been pinging away over the past few hours with angry reactions and press releases from all over India.

At a time when the US is facing its worst environmental disaster ever, caused by a foreign multinational company, surely one could have expected Capitol Hill to notice a measure of similarity between the two incidents and come up a more sensitive response?

Only eight days ago President Obama spoke of holding British Petroleum  (BP) “fully accountable on behalf of the United States as well as the people and communities victimized” by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. “We will demand that they pay every dime they owe for the damage they’ve done and the painful losses that they’ve caused,” he said. BP will probably have to cough up billions of dollars in damages.

Is it too much to expect that the US help the people and communities victimized in India hold those responsible for the death and suffering of thousands and reconsider its stand on extradition?

I leave you with a link, http://bit.ly/blwp8K,  to an iconic image by photographer Pablo Bartholomew which has been imprinted in my mind for over two decades.

(PS: FYI, In Michigan, where Dow Chemical has its headquarters, effluents from the company’s facility in the city of Midland have contaminated city water as well as a 52-mile stretch of the Saginaw River watershed with the chemical dioxin. Last month the Environmental Protection Agency reaffirmed its position that dioxin causes cancer and other negative health effects even at extremely low levels of exposure)

Photo by Flickr user obinno