The Night That Shook the World: Remembering the Bhopal Gas Tragedy After 4 Decades

The Bhopal Gas Tragedy

The Bhopal gas tragedy is considered the worst industrial disaster in the world ever. It took place on December 2 and 3, 1984. Around midnight, some workers on duty at an insecticide manufacturing industry in Bhopal complained that their eyes were burning.

Around 12:15 AM

While the workers were on a tea break, they felt the smell getting strong, their eyes started burning, and they had bout of coughing. Within two hours, the gas spread around the city carried by air, and over the next two days, took thousands of innocent lives.

The Union Carbide Factory

The industry of Bhopal where the disaster took place was a factory of the union carbide company. A company older than 100 years was built-in 1969 to produce the pesticide Sevin using methyl isocyanate.

Prediction of the tragedy

Mohammad Ashraf, the worker who died in 1881, told his friend that he was worried about the plant. He was concerned that the plant was not working the way it should and informed his friend Rajkumar Kewani, a journalist, about his concerns. He made a report named as Save the city and also predicted that there could be a tragedy soon.

Contributing factors

The factors which led to this tragedy were poor safety standards at the plant, inadequate maintenance of equipment, lack of proper training for employees, insufficient warning systems in place.

The black night for Bhopal

People in Bhopal, living their regular lives, had no clue about what was coming. The night of 2nd December 1984 turned out to be the night of hell for the citizens. A cold night in December when everyone was probably under their quilts. Around 9 PM, workers changed their shift, and workers at the MIC section started their work by cleaning the pipes.

Actions taken by the Government

As the news spread around the nation the next day, now it was to be seen what steps our government takes after such a big disaster. The first thing that happens is that Union Carbide sends their technical team to India and the team converts the MIC into less dangerous gas. This operation was called Operation Faith.

The legal battle

Press conferences were called and Warren Anderson, the chairman of The Union Carbide, took the responsiblity into his own words. He got arrested the very next day but the legal team of the company was getting ready for all the legal rebellion that they were about to face. The government of India passed The Bhopal Gas Leak Act in March 1985, which allowed the government of India.

The protests

The story did not end there because the residents of Madhya Pradesh were not happy. Union Carbide paid the compensation to the government and that was not enough to prevail justice, so they protested. In February 1989, Satish Dhawan, once a chairperson of ISRO, filed a petition to protest against this and the case reopens again.

Follow up

Over the next few years, a lot of things happened. Court cases after court cases, but the conclusion came up when the court declared Union Carbide and Warren Anderson to be the criminals. The Indians who were accused paid fine and Warren Anderson did not appear in the court for once, he died of natural causes in 2014.