More skeletons tumbled out on Wednesday in the Bhopal gas tragedy case of how former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson got bail immediately after his arrest but the then CBI chief rejected claims that the agency was asked not to pursue his extradition.
The role of Arjun Singh, who was Madhya Pradesh chief minister when the disaster struck, has also come under the scanner with reports that a state plane was provided to fly Mr Anderson from Bhopal to Delhi on December 7, 1984, three days after the gas leak. Mr Singh was not available for comments.
On top of a former CBI official’s charge on Mr Anderson’s extradition, the then district magistrate of Bhopal came out with his version of how he was asked to ensure bail for the Carbide official hours after his arrest. “They (Anderson and others) came to Bhopal from Bombay by service flight. They were taken into police custody at the airport and taken to the Union Carbide guest house where they were told that they were under arrest and they were lodged in three separate rooms and the formality of arrest was completed,” former DM Moti Singh told reporters in Bhopal.
Then, he said, around 2 pm (December 7, 1984), the chief secretary called the SP and the DM to his office and told them to release Mr Anderson and put him in the same plane waiting in the airport to go to Delhi.
“Accordingly, we went to the place where he was lodged. We observed the formalities of granting him bail. A Carbide employee stood surety and thereafter he was released on bail, taken to the airport and put on a State plane to New Delhi,” Mr Singh said.
In Hyderabad, former CBI director K. Vijayarama Rao on Wednesday rejected claims of a former joint direct B.R. Lall the agency was asked not to pursue Mr Anderson’s extradition from the US. —PTI