When the new district and sessions judge, Bhopal, Manoj Shrivastava, heard the appeal of both the prosecution and the convicts in the Bhopal gas disaster criminal case for four days until Thursday, he was the eighth judge to do so in the 14-year-old case. In fact, Shrivastava will be hearing the case a second time as he was the district judge, Bhopal, before the tenure of the previous district judge, Amitabh Mishra, and heard the case for a while before he was transferred as registrar general in the MP high court.
The defence counsel for two convicts in the case, J Mukund and S P Chowdhury, Anirban Roy, moved an application in the MP high court pleading that Shrivastava should be allowed to hear the case further because he heard his application under section 468 of the CrPC, in which he sought a retrial of the case (calling the prosecution CBI charges against his clients as ‘malafide, bogus and unfounded’) a good deal. The hearing in the case remained stalled for a few months before the application was rejected by the high court. As the case drags on, fortunately for the gas disaster survivors, the incumbent district judge has decided to hear the case twice a month for four days, raising hopes that the case would be decided in the sessions court before the convicts and survivors of the gas disaster both vanish with the case still pending for disposal in the appellate court.
“I sometimes feel the criminal case will survive both the seven accused convicted in the case and the survivors of the tragedy, as 40 years have passed since the gas tragedy struck Bhopal, and I am very sure the actual survivors of the tragedy are very few in numbers now,” said a lawyer on the condition of anonymity. What the lawyer said is true, as three of the eight Union Carbide officials convicted in the case died during the pendency of the appeal. One of them died during the trial of the case in the court of the CJM itself.
Co-convener of the Bhopal Group of Information & Action (BGIA), Rachna Dhingra, who is an intervener in the case assisting the prosecution agency CBI, accuses that the counsel for the convicts is raising non-issues in the court as “delaying tactics” to ensure that his clients don’t have to serve the sentence. “They were released on bail the same day when they were sentenced, they also have exemption from coming to court, and their lawyer is delaying proceedings in the court by raising one issue or another. When it’s rejected by the court, he goes to the high court and even the supreme court, so that proceedings in the case are stalled,” she said.
Anirban Roy, while talking to TOI during one of the hearings, however, said, “Investigation in the case by the CBI was malafide, malicious, motivated, and fraudulent, and that’s why we sought a copy of the CBI case diary. When the court ruled against it, we moved an application under section 468 of the CrPC seeking a retrial in the case as the charges framed against the accused by the trial court were based on a botched-up CBI investigation. Whether the accused or the gas victims, justice should be done to all,” he said.
