[Assam] Today, it was a judicial tragedy

[uttam borthakur]

>From Yahoo News:''


 
Tue, Jun 8 05:18 AM

Twenty-five years ago it was a gas tragedy, what happened today is a judicial tragedy," said an angry Abdul Jabbar of the Bhopal Gas Peedith Mahila Udyog Sangathan after the court verdict on Monday. Jabbar's anger resonated across survivors and organisations working for their rights.
One of the few activists to have campaigned for the survivors from the beginning and the man whose petition led to the revival of criminal proceedings which had been dropped earlier, Jabbar said the verdict would be challenged in an upper court. He said the judgment was a mockery of justice as it not only came late but also let the main accused go scot-free. "We would have been satisfied only if the main accused had been hanged."
There were others who felt the verdict should have set an example for multinationals and warned them that they could not play with lives of poor people and get away with it. "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. He said the offences under which the accused were charged were similar to those invoked in case of a traffic accident.
Another activist, Balkrishna Namdeo, alleged that the CBI had kept only the interest of the multinational in mind while arguing the case. Hamida Bi, one of the survivors, alleged that the government and the CBI had sold out to the company. "People have been hanged for causing just one or two deaths. Here thousands lost lives and in the 26th year of the tragedy all that the accused got was two years," she said, adding that along with other victims she would fight for justice till the very end.
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said though the court gave what was possible, the quantum of punishment to the accused in such a huge disaster was not enough.
Earlier in the day, survivors carrying posters and shouting slogans turned up on the premises of the Chief Judicial Magistrate's court in spite of prohibitory orders since Sunday evening. Officials of Union Carbide India Limited, the Indian subsidiary of Union Carbide Corporation, were brought to the courtroom much before proceedings began at 11 am.
Trouble began with the survivors and activists trying to push their way into the courtroom. Jabbar demanded to know why was he being kept out of a trial that he was instrumental in starting. However, they were kept out and so were mediapersons on orders of the magistrate.
The survivors also said the Union government had not showed any real intention of bringing main accused Warren Anderson to justice by failing to serve warrants on him and for failing to seek his extradition. Their anger against the government and the judiciary also stemmed from the monetary settlement of 1989, and the apex court's dilution of the charge against the accused from culpable homicide to the one of death due to negligence.

/*YAHOO.EU.Messenger = new Messenger();
var sStoryHeadline="%26#39;Today, it was a judicial tragedy%26#39;"+'%0A';
var sStoryLink="http://in.news.yahoo.com/48/20100608/804/tnl-today-it-was-a-judicial-tragedy_1.html"+'%0A';
var sDefaultMsg = "Check out this story on Yahoo! News:"+'%0A';
if (document.all) { sStoryHeadline = escape(sStoryHeadline); }
*/




Uttam Kumar Borthakur