Warren Anderson, wanted in Bhopal gas tragedy, dies

[V.Balasubramani]

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Warren Anderson, wanted in Bhopal gas tragedy, dies

Former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson, wanted in India in connection with the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy has died aged 92.

Anderson died on September 29 at a nursing home in Vero Beach, Florida but his death was not announced by his family and was confirmed from public records, the New York Times reported.

The Indian government made multiple requests to extradite him, and officially labelled him a fugitive. A judge also called him an “absconder”.

Anderson reached Bhopal four days after the accident, where he was immediately arrested. But after quickly paying bail, he never returned to face trial.

The Bhopal horror began around midnight on December 2-3, 1984, when a chemical reaction in a plant that made insecticides caused a leak of toxic gases that swept through the surrounding community.

The Madhya Pradesh government confirmed 3,787 deaths as a result. More than a half million people were injured, with many dying from illnesses, including lung cancer, kidney failure and liver disease.

Read more: Warren Anderson, wanted in Bhopal gas tragedy, dies - The Hindu

 

[V.Balasubramani]

Centre will now bring to book other accused, hope victims

Activists and victims hoped that the Centre would, at least now, take steps to bring the guilty company to book

Activists and victims express the hope that with the death of Warren Anderson, former chief executive officer of the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), the Centre will, at least now, take steps to bring the guilty company to book by making the other accused stand trial and bring a sense of closure to the survivors and other affected persons.


“We know that it is not part of our culture even to speak ill of a dead person, let alone spit on his picture. But what to do? The people are so angry over what has happened and is continuing to happen,” said Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha president Nawab Khan, an affected person himself, about the public show of anger at the now-defunct Union Carbide factory in Bhopal as news of his death spread on Friday.

Anderson was the chief executive officer of the UCC, owner of Union Carbide India Ltd., which ran the plant from where the deadly methyl isocyanate leaked into the densely populated bastis of Old Bhopal.

The UCC is now an American corporation wholly owned by the Dow Chemical Company. The tragedy was one of the worst industrial disasters in the world, leaving thousands of people dead and over half a million injured on the intervening night of December 2 and 3, barely three days after Anderson celebrated his 63rd birthday.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/nation...ersons-death/article6552807.ece?homepage=true