Anguished over the trial court’s verdict in the Bhopal gas tragedy, an NGO working for the survivors of the world’s worst industrial disaster that killed over 15,000 people, on Tuesday said it will challenge the judgment in Madhya Pradesh high court and meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and law minister M. Veerappa Moily in this regard.
“We are going to challenge the chief judicial magistrate’s order in the Madhya Pradesh high court. We want that the seven convicts should be tried under Section 304-II (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and other tough sections of IPC and punished severely for more than 30,000 deaths,” Bhopal Gas Peedith Mahila Udyog Sanghathan (BGPMUS) convenor Abdul Jabbar told reporters here. “We are waiting for the copy of the CJM’s order,” he said.
Welcoming Mr Moily’s statement that “justice had been buried” in the 23-year-old case, he said, they will soon meet the law minister and the Prime Minister to ensure that the convicts of the industrial disaster were prosecuted under tough charges. “We will ask Singh and Moily to set up a commission to look into the gas tragedy case and set up a special cell for a speedy trial,” he said.
“We are unhappy with the prosecution agency, CBI, which has failed to bring to India, Warren Anderson, the then chairman of Union Carbide Corporation, USA to face trial,” Jabbar said.
—PTI