BHOPAL : Government does not take any initiatives to ensure justice to the Bhopal gas victims. On the Contrary, the government files case against them, whenever they tried to raise the voice for the justice.
These were words of the gas victims who had come to district and sessions court on Friday in connection with a case was filed against them for the protest which they had staged against the then Union minister Jairam Ramesh in 2009 for his alleged irritating remarks.
Bhopal Group for Information and Action’s Rachna Dhingra said, “It is highly ridiculous that government is least bothered about justice for us but, whenever we try to raise our voice for it, the government frame us and consequently we have to bear the brunt of it.”
Annoyed over Union minister of state for forests and environment Jairam Ramesh’s remarks over the world’s worst industrial disaster that killed over 15,000 people and left more than 5 lakh victims 25 years ago, Bhopal gas victims had burnt his effigy alleging the minister behaved like “a spokesman of Union Carbide Corporation”.
The minister on his visit to the closed UCC factory in Bhopal had picked up a handful of toxic waste in the premises and said: “I held the toxic waste in my hand.
I’m still alive and not coughing.” Later he said the “truth” about the gas tragedy and how it occurred were “extremely complex” and “uncomfortable”.
He also had advised 25 years after the tragedy, it was time to move on.