New Delhi, June 29
Surprisingly, there were no protests in India after a US court’s “no-liability” clean chit to Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and its former chief Warren Anderson — those responsible for the world’s worst industrial disaster on that dark night of December 2-3, 1984, in Bhopal.

NGOs working for Bhopal victims, in fact, term the judgement as “nothing new, as they try to draw a link between the timing of the judgment and upcoming London Olympics, where Dow Chemical — the current owner of UCC — is a major sponsor.

“Protesting is not going to change things… we are going to put out efforts in appealing against the verdict. Union Carbide and Warren Anderson are not out of the woods. In India, both are named accused in criminal cases and both are also offenders since they were declared fugitives from justice for having failed to honour summons issued by a trial court,” maintains Rachna Dhingra of Bhopal Group for Information and Action.

The group is assisting the plaintiffs battling the MNC in US courts.

US District Judge John Keenan on June 26 held that neither the UCC nor Anderson was liable for environmental remediation or pollution-related claims at the firm’s former chemical plant in Bhopal.

Rachna, however, says that Keenan's dismissal is the fourth instance of dismissal during the course of the case.

“It had been dismissed three times earlier and reinstated at the behest of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. We intend to appeal against the decision since we believe that we have solid evidence that the UCC was in full control of the design of the waste management system and directed the manner in which wastes were handled in the course of the plant's operation. We believe that we will prevail at the appeals stage like we have the last three times that Judge Keenan rejected our plaint,” she says.