New Delhi – Nearly three years after toxic gases from a Union Carbide Corporation’s (UCC) factory killed an estimated 15,000 people and left more than half a million seriously ill in the Indian city of Bhopal, a chemical trading firm – Visa Petrochemicals Private Limited – was incorporated in Mumbai.
Over the next 14 years, Visa Petrochemicals became a linchpin in an elaborate plan by American chemical giant UCC to discreetly sell its products in India while it evaded criminal trial for spewing lethal gases that killed the residents of Bhopal on the midnight of December 2, 1984. A Bhopal court had declared UCC’s then-CEO Warren Anderson a fugitive and ordered that the properties and products of UCC and its subsidiaries, all of which were proclaimed offenders and absconders in India for not appearing in the criminal trial against them, be seized.
Internal company records, accessed by The Reporters’ Collective (TRC) for Al Jazeera, now reveal that UCC discreetly sold its products to several firms owned by the federal and state governments, and some large private corporations. Among them was a buyer from ground zero: a firm owned by the government of Madhya Pradesh, the state whose capital Bhopal saw one of the world’s worst industrial disasters. The firm was a joint venture partner in a cable company that bought UCC products.
To create a discreet backdoor into India where the public saw it as the devil of Bhopal and courts were going after it, UCC and its…
