'Disaster tourism would help Union Carbide escape liability'

Bhopal, Dec 2 : Efforts to promote 'disaster tourism' here could assist Union Carbide in persuading American courts that no pollution exists and help it escape liability, a lawyer working for the cause of Bhopal gas tragedy victims said Wednesday.

H. Rajan Sharma, an attorney practicing in New York with the law firm Sharma and DeYoung LLP, is lead counsel for plaintiffs in the case, Sahu et al. v. Union Carbide et al, and has been involved in major international litigation in the US courts.

"Irresponsible statements by Indian politicians, at the state and central levels, as well as misguided efforts to promote disaster tourism at Bhopal would assist Union Carbide in persuading American courts that no pollution problem exists and help it escape liability," Sharma said at a press conference here.

Thousands of tonnes of methyl isocyanate leaked out of the Union Carbide factory on the night of Dec 2-3, 1984 killing over 3,500 people instantly and maiming several thousands for life.

Sharma, who also represents victims of huge environmental pollution stemming from the Union Carbide's now defunct pesticide plant in Bhopal, said the company had transferred polluting technology to its Bhopal plant.

As owner of the land on which the Bhopal plant is located, the government of India has a responsibility to hold the polluter liable and follow up on its own request in 2004 to the American courts to order Union Carbide to clean up, Sharma said.

In 2004, the US court invited the Indian government to intervene in the current litigation.

Union Carbide has argued, according to Sharma, that American law and American courts are powerless to remedy this problem because it was caused in India and affects Indians while at the same time refusing to submit to Indian law and courts contradicting its own earlier claim that cases involving Bhopal should be heard in India.

"Union Carbide is suggesting that neither Indian law nor American law applies to them and, therefore, that they are effectively above the law," Sharma said.

However, he said, the court of appeals in the United States had directed the Union Carbide to produce additional documents concerning its involvement in the Bhopal plant.