Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday said that his government will try to ensure that the U.S. takes a “more favourable attitude” towards the extradition of former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson to stand trial in India in the Bhopal gas leak case.
Dr. Singh told journalists accompanying him on his way back home from Toronto that he did not raise the issue in his discussions with U.S. President Barack Obama during his meeting with him on the sidelines of the G20 Summit.
“Well, we are where we stand. We will try to ensure that US government takes a more favourable attitude towards the extradition. But we have not approached them yet. I did not raise this issue in my discussions with President Obama.
We will cross the bridge when we come to it,” Dr. Singh said in reply to questions.
Asked whether the government and the Congress establishment was not coming clean on who was responsible for letting Anderson go in December 1984, days after the worst industrial disaster that killed more than 15,000 people, Dr. Singh said, “What is the reality? We are not hiding anything.”
Dr. Singh’s comments come in the midst of a raging controversy over who was responsible for Anderson’s exit from India after his arrest in the Bhopal gas leak case and his decision not to return to stand trial in the case.
The 89-year-old former UCC chief was declared an absconder in the case by a Bhopal court. He now lives outside New York.
“I think the Group of Ministers has looked at records. There is nothing that they have come across by way of definite findings as to who took the decision. These records are not available now.”
To a question whether there was not a collective failure on the part of the government, political establishment and judiciary in the Bhopal issue, Dr. Singh said what the government proposed to do has been made clear by the GoM whose report has been endorsed by the Cabinet.
“It is a fact, it is true that our judicial processes are time consuming. That it should have taken 25 years before the case could be decided is something that we have to reflect about and the inadequacies of our judicial system,” he said.
