Lalit Shastri

Standing on top of Shamla hill, overlooking the picturesque Upper Lake of Bhopal are buildings that once housed the Union Carbide guest house and research center. Thirty-four years after the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster, these structures have become a grim reminder of how the local authorities had given the primacy of place to a multinational company and when disaster struck on the midnight of 2 and 3 December 1984 the contraption was allowed to get away with what Bhopal citizens called “mass murder” – a charge that eventually got reduced to death by negligence and culpable homicide not amounting to murder