Personally, I'd say that this sentence is worse than if they hadn't been tried at all.New Delhi, India (CNN) -- A court in central India ruled Monday that seven top executives and the company they worked for are guilty for their role in the 1984 industrial disaster that killed thousands in Bhopal, India.
The leaking of poisonous gas from Union Carbide India Limited -- the now-defunct local subsidiary of the American chemical company -- was one of the world's worst industrial disasters. Plaintiffs had waited more than two decades for the verdict.
The convicted former employees have been sentenced to the maximum punishment allowed in the case. The judge imposed a two year prison term and a fine of about $2000 each after convicting the men of negligence causing death, endangering public life and causing hurt.
Indian industrialist Keshub Mahindra, then head of Union Carbide India Limited, six colleagues and their company were convicted of negligence, said prosecuting attorney C. Sahay. Another company manager charged in connection with the litigation died during the trial, he explained.
Last year, the trial court also issued a warrant of arrest for Warren Anderson, the former chairman of the U.S.-based Union Carbide Corporation. He has been declared an "absconder" -- or a fugitive -- from the indictment, Sahay said.
Originally, the defendants faced stronger charges of culpable homicide. In 1996, India's supreme court downgraded the charges to death by negligence following an appeal.
Nearly 4,000 people died instantly when a milky fog of methyl isocyanate, a chemical used to produce pesticides, escaped from the company's plant in Bhopal in December 1984. More than 10,000 other deaths have been blamed on related illnesses, with adverse health effects reported in hundreds of thousands of survivors.
Many of them struggle with ailments including breathlessness, cancer, near-blindness, fatigue heart problems and tuberculosis.
Union Carbide, now a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co., paid a $470 million settlement to India in 1989. The company blamed the disaster on an act of sabotage and has said it no longer has any liability.
But according to the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, survivors have received an average of only $500 each in compensation.
Union Carbide says neither the parent company nor its officials are subject to the jurisdiction of Indian courts.
Indian authorities blamed the tragedy on the maintenance and design of the site.
The company, however, has denied the charges, insisting the leak was an act of sabotage by an employee who it said had tampered with the gas tank.
Union Carbide has also defended its safety record.
"The (Bhopal) plant addressed all of those (safety) issues well before the December 1984 gas leak. None of them had anything to do with the incident," the company says on its Bhopal Information Center Web site.
But activists and survivors have long been demanding that somebody be held criminally responsible for the disaster, and criticizing Indian officials for their response.
"The government does not want to discourage foreign investors," said Abdul Jabbar, convener of the Bhopal Gas-Affected Working Womens' Union, who claims the Indian government has attempted to protect the multinational company.
The toxic leak, he said, has affected more than 575,000 people.
On the 25th anniversary of the gas leak last year, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh called the events in Bhopal in 1984 a "tragedy of neglect."
"The leakage resulted in over 5,000 people losing their lives and many others being incapacitated permanently. The enormity of that tragedy of neglect still gnaws at our collective conscience," he said.
He said the government implemented several measures to provide relief, medical rehabilitation and to improve to living conditions of affected families.
"I reaffirm our government's commitment to resolving issues of safe drinking water, expeditious clean up of the site, continuation of medical research, and any other outstanding issues connected with the Bhopal gas tragedy," he said.
Sixteen years after the leak, Union Carbide became part of the Dow Chemical Corporation. Union Carbide claims the issue has been resolved and Dow has no responsibility for the leak.
"There were no liabilities for Dow to inherit through Union Carbide on the Bhopal gas release. Dow acquired the shares of Union Carbide in 2001, more than a decade after Union Carbide settled its liabilities with the Indian government in 1989 by paying $470 million," Union Carbide's Bhopal website says.
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