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New Delhi: The Attorney General of India on Tuesday 11 October 2022 assured the five-judge Bench of the Supreme Court that he would be ready at the next hearing on 10 January 2023 with facts and arguments to argue the case for enhanced compensation to the victims of the 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster that left thousands dead and hundreds of thousand Bhopal citizens affected, a vast number of them for life.

Rachna Dhingra of the Bhopal Group for Information & Action said in a statement: “As our lawyer, Ms. Karuna Nundy, pointed out at today’s hearing, Union Carbide committed a fraud upon the Court while getting the settlement of 470 million dollars approved in 1989. The corporation suppressed internal documents that showed that exposure to the leaked gas was known to cause permanent damages, and got the government to agree to a paltry settlement. Carbide is also a proclaimed absconder from India’s criminal courts. We hope the government will expose Union Carbide’s fraud by presenting actual figures of death and injuries caused by the disaster at the next hearing on January 10”, she has observed.

“The government is just claiming a refund of the moneys it has spent in compensating Bhopal victims. This will not benefit the survivors. Unless the figures of death and the extent of injury are corrected immediately, the Curative Petition will heap more injustice on the Bhopal survivors,” said Nawab Khan of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha.