BHOPAL: K V Shetty, a convict in the Bhopal gas disaster criminal case, has died, a Bhopal court was told last Tuesday. He was 80.
Shetty was plant superintendent in the now defunct Union Carbide plant in Bhopal from where methyl Isocyanate (MIC) had leaked in the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984, killing thousands and rendering tens of thousands completely or partially disabled. He is the second accused in the case to have died. Another UC employee, R B Roychowdhury, a former assistant works manager, had died in 1988.
On June 7, 2010 — over a quarter century after the tragedy — a trial court had convicted eight accused for criminal negligence under IPC section 304A, and sentenced them to two years in prison. They got bail the same day. CBI filed a curative petition in Supreme Court for enhancement of sentence and an appeal in the sessions court against the chief judicial magistrate order. The convicts also filed an appeal.
37 years on, gas case drags on
It was during a sessions court hearing that the convicts’ counsel, Ajay Gupta, said that Shetty had died on September 6, 2021.
The Bhopal gas disaster criminal liability case — one full of twists and turns — was restored after Supreme Court revoked the criminal immunity granted to Union Carbide following the Bhopal Accord of 1989 on review petitions of the activist groups working among survivors of the gas disaster.
Even as the case was proceeding in the sessions court, SC changed the charges against the accused to IPC 304A. The trial was then moved from a sessions court to the CJM court.
The prime accused in the case, the then chairman of Union Carbide Corporation, Warren Anderson, and two of the three companies made accused in the case —Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and Union Carbide (Eastern) — never turned up in the court for trial UCIL and its eight Indian officials faced trial and were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. Anderson died in the USA in September 2014.
Following public outrage over light punishment to the accused, CBI filed a curative petition in SC, seeking a tougher jail term. The apex court dismissed the petition in April 2011.
The case in sessions court is on. Five judges have since changed and Bhopal district & sessions judge, Guribala Singh, is the sixth judge to hear the case. Thirty-seven years later, the case drags on and survivors of the world’s worst industrial disaster are still in pursuit of justice.
