7 Jun 2010

Bhopal verdict due after 25 years

A court in the Indian city of Bhopal is due to rule on whether a gas plant leak that killed thousands of people more than 25 years ago was a criminal act.

The leak at the Union Carbide plant was worst industrial disaster in history. Forty tonnes of a toxin called methyl isocyanate leaked from the factory and settled over slums on 3 December 1984.

BHOPAL

Campaigners say at least 15,000 people were killed within days, and say the horrific effects of the gas continue to this day. The site of the former pesticide plant is now abandoned. It was taken over by the state government of Madhya Pradesh in 1998, but environmentalists say poison is still found there.

More than a dozen judges have heard the criminal case since 1987, when India's leading detective agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), charged eight people with "culpable homicide not amounting to murder

BBC NewsTehran Times

UPDATE - Verdict is in:

Eight jailed over India gas disaster

A court in the Indian city of Bhopal has sentenced eight people to two years each in jail over a gas plant leak that killed thousands of people in 1984.The convictions are the first since the disaster at the Union Carbide plant - the world's worst industrial accident.

More on BBC