New Delhi: Union Carbide on Monday said that the company and it officials were not accused in the Bhopal Gas tragedy case since the "charges were divided long ago into a separate case".
"Union Carbide and its officials were not part of this case since the charges were divided long ago into a separate case. Furthermore, Union Carbide and its officials are not subject to the jurisdiction of the Indian court since they did not have any involvement in the operation of the plant, which was owned and operated by UCIL," a spokesman for Union Carbide, Tomm F Sprick, said.
Sprick claimed that the Bhopal plant was designed, owned, operated and managed on a day-to-day basis by Union Carbide India Limited and its employees and all those convicted are the "appropriate people from UCIL - officers and those who actually ran the plant on a daily basis have appeared to face charges".
He pointed out that in 1994, Union Carbide sold its entire stake in Union Carbide India Limited which ran the plant in Bhopal, to MacLeod Russell (India) Limited, which renamed the company, Eveready Industries India Limited (Eveready Industries).
In 1998, the state government of Madhya Pradesh took over the Bhopal site from Eveready Industries.
Former chairman of Union Carbide Warren Anderson, who has had earlier been declared by a court an absconder after failing to appear for trial, has also not been convicted in the case.
Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohan P Tiwari pronounced the verdict on Monday in the case almost 26 years after the tragedy claimed the lives of 15,000 people when 40 tons of toxic methyl isocyanate leaked on the intervening night of December 2 and 3 1984.
Tiwari convicted Keshub Mahindra, the then non-executive former chairman of UCIL, and seven others in the case and sentenced them to a mere two years in prison. They were also fined Rs 1 lakh each, but soon after the verdict was pronounced seven of them were given bail on a surety of Rs 25,000 each.
UCIL has been asked to pay a fine of Rs 5 lakh.
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