Bhopal Verdict: When Justice Delayed Means Justice Denied

An Indian court convicted seven former executives of Union Carbide’s Indian subsidiary on charges of negligence and manslaughter yesterday, more than 25 years after the chemical plant they operated in Bhopal leaked poisonous gas, killing more than 3,000 people immediately and resulting in the deaths of thousands more over the following months.The accused were sentenced to two years in prison — the maximum allowed under the sections of the law with which they were charged — and fined 100,000 rupees each (a little over $2,000). The company itself was convicted of the same charges and fined 500,000 rupees ($10,600). The convicted executives are entitled to an appeal and so, within hours of their conviction, they were all out again on bail — having posted bonds and sureties worth a total of 50,000 rupees each.

The verdicts, while expected, have nonetheless outraged many in India — and for good reason. In India, the wheels of justice turn at a pace that can only be measured on a geological timescale. And here, justice delayed really does mean justice denied in most cases. Many of those who were harmed by the Bhopal leak have already died in the ensuing years. Others will see little to no compensation for their loss and injuries even after yesterday’s verdict.

The U.S. company itself settled charges relating to the case for $470 million in 1989 on orders of the Indian Supreme Court, but much of that money went to the pockets of various lawyers, not to the victims. The Indian Supreme Court had quashed all other litigation relating to the tragedy following the settlement, but that decision was subsequently overturned, allowing the cases against the Indian Union Carbide executives to proceed. The Indian government has been trying to extradite Warren Anderson, the chairman of Union Carbide at the time of the gas leak, from the United States since 1993, but has so far been unsuccessful.

The case ought to make clear the urgent need for judicial reform in India, where overloaded courts and underpaid judges are unable to process cases in a time frame that serves justice or society. The average time it takes to get a criminal case for a major crime such as murder or rape from indictment to verdict in India is more than six years. In part because of the time it takes to bring cases to trial in India, the conviction rate for such crimes has dropped from about 20 percent in 1961 (which is still a shockingly low percentage), to less than 3 percent today. The backlog of cases is staggering: the Indian Supreme Court has some 52,000 cases waiting for adjudication. The various high courts across the country have an estimated 4 million cases pending before them, and the local trial courts have a whopping 27 million cases waiting to be heard. The backlog in the Delhi High Court is so extreme that its own chief judge, in a recent report, estimated that it would take the court more than 400 years to work through all the cases. The same report had found that there were more than 600 cases pending before the Delhi High Court that were over 20 years old!

Some of the problem is that there are simply not enough judges. Thousands of judicial posts across the country are vacant because qualified candidates cannot be found to fill them, especially at the low salaries most judges earn. (The low salaries also contribute to another problem that plagues the Indian judiciary: rampant corruption.) But clearly something must be done as well to limit the number of frivolous cases pending before the courts and limit the number of appeals allowed.

India likes to boast that unlike some other developing nations, it has the rule of law. But that statement is farcical when it takes more than two decades to reach a decision in a major case. The lack of enforceability of the law is holding India back – scaring off foreign investment and preventing its own businesses from racing ahead. It is also contributing to the inequality among Indians – inequality that now threatens to rend the country’s social fabric. Indians sometimes look skeptically at foreign companies, especially industrial companies, that come here to do business. “We don’t want another Bhopal,” they say. But “no more Bhopals” ought to be a rallying cry for judicial reform, not protectionism.