Bhopal Gas Tragedy: High Court directs Dow Chemicals to disclose its business interests

Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh), July 22 (ANI): The Jabalpur High Court has directed Dow Chemicals to disclose its assets, liabilities and other business interests in India and produce the Union Carbide's merger documents with the company by August 17.

A division bench of Justice Arun Mishra and Justice S C Sinha issued the directives in response to two applications moved during hearing of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) remediation of Union Carbide site.

Assistant Solicitor General of India Vivek Tankha presented the recommendations of the Group of Ministers (GoM) on Bhopal gas tragedy in the court.

The GoM constituted to examine all aspects of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster, seeking Anderson's extradition apart from measures to clean up the disaster site, had submitted the report to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh on June 21.

The GoM had dealt with all the issues - compensation, legal issues, including the issue of the extradition of Warren Anderson, the legal options available to the Government of India, and most importantly, remediation matters, and health related matters.

Union Carbide settled its liabilities to the Indian Government in 1989 by paying 470 million dollars before being bought by another US company, Dow Chemical.

In the early hours of Dec. 3, 1984, around 40 metric tonnes of toxic Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked into the atmosphere and was carried by the wind to the surrounding slums. (ANI)