CBI files curative petition in Bhopal Gas Tragedy-2/8/10

02/08/2010

CBI files curative petition in Bhopal Gas Tragedy

New Delhi : After fourteen years, the Central Bureau of Investigation on Monday filed a curative petition to correct the Supreme Court’s “colossal failure of justice” in 1996 when it chose to dismiss the 1984 Bhopal Gas tragedy as a result of an act of negligence, and not culpable homicide, by former Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson and his Indian employees.



"The tragedy unfolded in Bhopal on the night intervening the 02-12-1984 and 03-12-1984 when a highly dangerous and toxic gas, namely Methyl Isocynate (MIC), escaped from the Union Carbide. It resulted in the death of 5,295 human beings, and injuries to almost 5,68,292 persons besides loss of livestock and loss of property of almost 5,478 persons," the petition details the enormity of the tragedy.

The 70-page petition, settled by Attorney General of India GE Vahanvati, was filed in the Supreme Court at to "restore" the criminal charge of Section 304 Part II IPC (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) against the accused persons. Thus, sending a message to the world that $ 470 million is just not enough to compensate for "one of world's biggest industrial catastrophes".



"No amount of compensation or rehabilitation can substitute the loss of these innocent lives. The state is duty bound to ensure that justice is done to these thousands of persons who lost their lives," the CBI, in its petition drafted by advocate Devadutt Kamat, explained why it is back in court.

It squarely blames the Supreme Court Bench led by then Chief Justice of India AM Ahmadi for disregarding prosecution evidence, which unequivocally showed the accused persons guilty of offences under Section 304 Part II - which attracts imprisonment up to 10 years or fine or both. Justice Ahmadi's Bench had quashed charges under Section 304 Part II and replaced it with the lesser offence under Section 304-A (causing death by negligence), which prescribes punishment up to two years or fine or both.



The country's premier investigating agency said the state owes it to the society and the nation as a whole to now make an attempt to remedy the "gross miscarriage of justice" done by the Supreme Court on September 13, 1996. "The perpetrators behind the leakage of hazardous MIC gas in the UCIL plant should not be able to walk away with a minimal punishment of two years under Section 304-A in one of world's biggest industrial catastrophes," the CBI said.

The 1996 judgment was delivered without consideration of any material placed before the court by the prosecution at that stage. "The failure of justice" on the Supreme Court's part opened a loophole for the accused persons to get away with minimal charges despite categorical evidence pointing to the commission of offences under Section 304 Part II of the IPC, the agency said.



It contends that the SC judgment led to an ineffectual 26-year-long trial at the Bhopal Chief Judicial Magistrate's court, which saw Anderson declared an absconder in 1992 and the seven remaining accused, including former Union Carbide India chairman and accused number 2 Keshub Mahindra, get a two-year jail sentence each on June 7, 2010.

CBI however said the two-decade trial was instrumental in collecting "categorical evidence" which shows that the tragedy was a result of the accused persons' criminal knowledge of the defective plant, rather than mere negligence. The Bench, it said, had ignored prosecution evidence about how the accused were led by "commercial motives" to commit a "deliberate omission to rectify the grave and hazardous defects with a certain knowledge that the consequence may result in death". The plant was running at a heavy loss at the time.



"The material gathered by the investigation agency clearly pointed out that the accused persons had the knowledge inter alia relating to the inherent defects in the design and the defects in the Plant, despite which no mitigating measures were undertaken," the CBI said, requesting the Supreme Court to re-consider the "errors apparent" in the 1996 verdict.

To this extent, the CBI even quotes the apex court's own judgment of 2002 which had introduced the Doctrine of Curative Petition: "The duty to do justice in the rarest of rare cases shall have to prevail over the policy of the certainty of judgment... wherein declining to reconsider the judgment would be oppressive to judicial conscious and would cause perpetuation of irremediable injustice."

Source: The Indian Express