Survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy have written to Union Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily requesting him to place some of their demands requiring urgent attention before the reconstituted Group of Ministers (GoM).
Among these are the setting up of the promised Empowered Commission on Bhopal for the long term relief and rehabilitation of the victims including medical care, medical research, and environmental cleanup; directing the Indian Council of Medical Research to restart the research that was disbanded in 1994; and an inquiry into the functioning of the Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust.
The 10-point letter has been jointly signed by the Bhopal Gas Peedith Mahila Udyog Sangathan (Abdul Jabbar Khan), the Bhopal Group for Information and Action (Satinath Sarangi and Rachna Dhingra) and the Bhopal Gas Peedith Sangharsh Sahayog Samiti (N.D. Jayaprakash and Sadhna Karnik).
The organisations appealed to the Centre (through the CBI) to file a curative petition in the Supreme Court against its March 10, 1997 review order on the criminal revision petition (Nos.1672-1675) of 1996. The review order diluted the charges against the accused from Section 304-II (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) to 304A (causing death by negligence) of the Indian Penal Code.
The organisations urged the government to initiate legal steps to ensure that the Dow Chemical Company, U.S. (now owner of the Union Carbide Corporation), appeared on behalf of UCC before the Court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Bhopal, in the miscellaneous judicial case of 1992, in which the absconding parties accused of the tragedy are to be tried.
In the same case, the government should execute the non-bailable warrant of arrest issued by the CJM on March 27, 1992 against Warren Anderson and the other accused (UCC, New York, and Union Carbide Eastern, Hong Kong).
Another long-standing demand is about the execution of a Letter Rogatory (letter of request) to the U.S. government issued by the CJM on July 6, 1988.
The letter to Mr. Moily sought permission for the CBI to carry out investigations at the then UCC's West Virginia plant to verify if the corporation had adopted double standards while installing safety systems in the methyl isocyanate unit at its Bhopal plant.
The letter calls on the Madhya Pradesh government to “urge the government of India to take legal measures to ensure that the Dow Chemical Company cleans up the contaminated soil and groundwater in and around the UCIL plant. “The government of India should also ensure that Dow provides necessary compensation to all those affected by drinking contaminated soil and groundwater from and around the plant site.”
The letter appealed to the Union Chemicals and Fertilizers Ministry to reopen — through the office of the Welfare Commissioner — the registration of claims for the 10,000 people who died after 1997 (when registration was stopped) due to disaster-related causes.
On similar lines, the office of the Welfare Commissioner must re-evaluate the 17,000 rejected death claims (about 80 per cent of the total claims).
