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Crime Writer’s Association Magazine – Red Herrings – Losing Control

Posted on January 6, 2025 in Bhopal, Losing Control

A Toxic Legacy

I wrote an article about my visit to the former Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India for the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) magazine – RED HERRINGS – included.

I’ve reproduced it below.

Red Herrings, January 2025

When I visited the site of the worst industrial accident in history, I was shocked to find that a dangerous, highly contaminated, abandoned factory is still standing, easily accessible to local children and grazing domestic animals. Untreated hazardous waste continues to leach into the soil and poison the drinking water.

What happened at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India in 1984 and why did it leave such a toxic legacy?

The Accident

The Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide factory in Bhopal, India was oversized, unreliable and uneconomic and was closing down when, just after midnight on the night of 2 to 3 December 1984, water entered a storage tank containing an intermediate and a runaway reaction took off. As the temperature and pressure soared, twenty-eight tonnes of toxic gas were released into the community. It was a cold, still night. The gas released from the factory chimney descended to ground level outside the factory walls and spread towards the centre of town in a dense, choking, toxic fog. Thousands of people died that night. Hundreds of thousands were injured, many of whom later perished. The tragedy continues today.

The Legacy – compensation

No amount of money could ever compensate the survivors for their trauma, loss, injury and economic destitution. But reasonable reparation could at least have alleviated some of the suffering.

The Government of India took over representation of the victims and their families in court and, in 1989 reached a settlement agreement with the American parent company, Union Carbide Corporation (UCC). The money made available was wholly inadequate, calculated using a gross underestimate of the number of fatalities and the severity of the survivors’ injuries. Claimants had to take out loans to pay for the legal support and medical evidence required. The burden of proof was put on the poor and often illiterate victims. The court processes were formal and highly bureaucratic. Distribution was slow, in some cases taking almost twenty years.

The Legacy – justice

As part of the 1989 settlement, all criminal charges were dropped. This was later revoked.

In 2010 eight Indian nationals, all former employees of UCIL (including one who had already died) were convicted of causing death by negligence, fined and sentenced to two years in prison. They were immediately released on bail and remain at liberty while they appeal against their conviction. It is highly unlikely that anyone will ever serve prison time.

Warren Anderson, the American chairman of UCC, the parent company, was also named as an accused and later declared an ‘absconder’ by the court. He died in the US in 2014 at the age of 92 without ever standing trial.

The proceeds from the sale of UCIL in 1994 were placed in a trust to fund a hospital in Bhopal to care for victims of the tragedy. Very large sums of money were directed towards equipping the hospital with sophisticated facilities wholly inappropriate for the care of destitute survivors suffering from chronic illness.

The legacy – the environment

In the 1989 settlement, no money was set aside for demolishing the factory, or for decontamination and remediation of the badly polluted land and adjacent waste lagoons.

The polluter pays principle is fundamental to environmental law and yet no one has accepted responsibility (or been held accountable) or for cleaning up the mess created by the abandonment of the former UCIL factory in Bhopal.

Toxic wastes from production and related processes are known to have been dumped both on the factory premises and just outside in the three solar evaporation ponds which were known to be leaking into the groundwater before the accident.

In 1998, the state government of Madhya Pradesh terminated the ninety-nine-year lease, took back control of the site, and stopped any further clean-up.

The survivors of the accident, continue to be affected by drinking water polluted by heavy metals and organochlorides as well as contaminated milk and meat from grazing animals.

Losing Control

Others have written fiction inspired by the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, most notably Indra Sinha with his brilliant Booker Prize Shortlisted Novel Animal’s People. After forty years, I wanted to tell the story from a different perspective. What if the relatives of the victims lost patience with the stalemate over clean up, compensation and justice?  What if a toxic release threatened to strike western homes?

No sane person, least of all the victims of the Bhopal accident, would ever align themselves with the sort of deranged terrorists I portray in Losing Control. We can never right a wrong by creating more wrongs. In Losing Control I wanted to draw attention to a long-forgotten tragedy and show that the risks of globalisation can cut both ways.

More information about the Bhopal Gas Tragedy and ways to help can be found at www.bhopal.org

Further technical information on the causes of the accident and how industry has changed since 1984 can be found at https://www.icheme.org/media/27533/lpb299online.pdf