Bhopal: As many as 16,000 people were killed on the intervening night of December 2 and 3 in 1984 when methyl isocyanate (MiC), an intermediary substance used to manufacture Sevin, a pesticide, leaked from tank 610 in the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal.
After 29 years, the fight for financial compensation for the survivors of the world's worst industrial disaster is far from over.
The survivors are demanding that the 1989 verdict, in which the Indian government agreed to a $470 million out-of-court settlement, be reopened.
The curative petition in the Supreme Court, filed in December 2010, argues against the terms of the 1989 settlement on the plea that it was based on underestimated figures of the dead and injured.
News came last Friday that no hearing took place at the Supreme Court on a curative petition filed and no further date had been fixed. Not a single hearing has taken place since then.
In 1989, the Supreme Court had approved a settlement between the government and Union Carbide that gave Rs 713 crore ($470 million) as compensation to victims estimated at 3,000 dead and over 1 lakh injured.
In the following 24 years the number of dead has grown to nearly 20,000 and number of those suffering disabilities to a staggering 5 lakh.
The effect of the poisonous gases was becoming clearer as time passed. The compensation needed to be given to many times more than the original number counted.
Under pressure from the harried survivors, the government moved the Supreme Court to review its order authorizing the settlement of 1989, so that a better compensation could be given to all the survivors and kin of dead.
Survivors of the Gas Tragedy this week held a sit-in at Bhopal's Lower Lake to mark the incident's 29th anniversary.
Children, who suffer ailments such as cerebral palsy, impairments of speech and hearing, epilepsy, heart diseases and others, were accompanied at the protest by parents and grandparents who survived the poisonous gas leak .
