Five Past Midnight in Bhopal

by Dominique Lapierre; Javier Moro

  In the two other Muslim cemeteries, the congestion was even worse, a fact that forced the city’s grand mufti, the venerable Kazi Wazid ul-Hussein, to issue an urgent fatwa authorizing the disturbance of old tombs in order to make room for Carbide’s victims. The fatwa stipulated that some ten bodies could be buried in the same grave. Soon a flood of trucks, cars and handcarts turned up with their macabre loads. The deceased were deposited at the entrance to Abdul Hamid’s cemetery in the columned building set aside for preparation of the dead. In the absence of relatives, this ritual was carried out by volunteers, who undressed the bodies and washed them in tepid water. Men and women were dealt with separately. The elderly Iftekar Begum, the eighty-year-old dowager who directed operations, marveled that so many of the deceased were wearing embroidered burkahs and flowers in their hair.

  “Last night was Sunday,” a friend explained to her, “they died while they were celebrating.”

  Other surprises awaited those dealing with the burial of the dead. Under pressure from the gases produced by the chemical decomposition of MIC, the corpses were subject to strange twitches. Here an arm stretched itself out, there a leg. Some bodies buried near the surface of the earth seemed to want to stand up. Terrified by these extraordinary “resurrections,” some people fainted, others shouted at the ghostly apparitions and yet others ran away screaming. Abdul Hamid was struck dumb; his cemetery had become a theater of ghosts.

  Bhopal’s most celebrated restaurateur had been obliged to hand over control of his ovens to his two sons and two sisters while he arranged for the Hindu funeral pyres. His associates from the Vishram Ghat Trust, the group in charge of cremations, were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task. The Hindu religion ordains that, with the exception of children, the bodies of the deceased must be burned. For that they needed firewood, but how were they to find enough for thousands of corpses? Shyam Babu worked a miracle. In the space of a few hours, he managed to fill fifteen trucks with enough wood to incinerate several hundred bodies. Cloth-makers brought him miles of linen with which to make shrouds.

  While he prepared to set light to the first pyre, two envoys of the mufti appeared. They had come to make certain that no Muslims would be burned by mistake. It was almost impossible to confuse men from the two communities; the followers of Allah wore a characteristic goatee, amulets around their necks, and bore marks left on their foreheads by their repeated prostrations. Not to mention the fact that they were circumcised. Unless they were veiled with their burkahs, women were more difficult to distinguish. Nevertheless, the mufti’s envoys left reassured. Shyam Babu was just about to plunge his torch into the pile of wood when someone grabbed his arm. The student Piyush Chawla had spotted a little gold cross around one young woman’s neck.

  “This woman isn’t a Hindu!” he cried. He extricated the body and placed it to one side of the pyre.

  Then he noticed an almost imperceptible quivering of her eyelids. Intrigued, he bent over the body. The hands and feet were neither rigid nor cold. This woman with bells on her ankles was not dead, he was sure of it. He put her on one of the trucks that was going to bring back more corpses from Hamidia Hospital and climbed up beside her. Frothy bubbles were coming out of her half-open mouth. Piyush Chawla could not help wondering whether he was witnessing some supernatural phenomenon.

  It was exactly two in the afternoon by the clock in Spices Square on that Monday the third of December when the smoke from the first funeral pyre rose into the sky over Bhopal, reducing to ashes those people whom Carbide’s beautiful plant had promised happiness and prosperity. Blowing now from the south, a light breeze carried away the last traces of deadly gas and replaced them with a smell even more appalling: the aroma of burning flesh.

  44

  “Death to the Killer Anderson!”

  Tuesday December 4, eight-thirty A.M. The athletic figure of the CEO of Union Carbide made his entrance into the boardroom at the company headquarters in Danbury, Connecticut. Since the previous day, Warren Anderson had been given hourly reports on the situation in Bhopal. For a son of immigrants who had managed to haul himself up to the top of the world’s third largest chemical giant, the tragedy was as much a personal disaster as a professional one. Anderson had set his sights on making Union Carbide an enterprise with a human face. Of his 700 industrial plants, employing 117,000 people in 38 countries, the Bhopal factory had been his favorite. It was he who had inaugurated it on May 4, 1980. The first drops of MIC that emerged from its distillation columns that day had been his victory. Thanks to the Sevin thus produced, tens of thousands of Indian peasants would be able to conquer the menace of famine.

  As soon as he heard about the tragedy, he had set up a special team to deal with events in total transparency. He had arranged for the media to maintain a constant link to the company spokespeople. Then he had shut himself away in his home office in Greenwich to think about what his initial reaction should be. Having made his decision, he called his closest assistants. Despite the terrified entreaties of his wife Lilian, he would leave immediately for Bhopal. His place was there, among the victims. He wanted to see for himself that everything that could be done was being done. His gesture would help underline the fact that the company he controlled was not a faceless, soulless giant, and that the recent tragedy was just one accident along a path intended to create a better, more just world. In short, his presence at the scene of the catastrophe would be an expression of the ideal that inspired him.

  In addition to a sense of moral obligation toward the victims, he also felt a responsibility to the company’s shareholders. Doubtless Carbide had the financial means to survive the worst possible disaster. But if the terrible news he had received was accurate, his duty was to do everything in his power to prevent his company from appearing cruel or irresponsible to its shareholders.

  By the somber faces that greeted him that Tuesday morning in the presidential boardroom at Danbury, Warren Anderson could tell that his colleagues were hostile to his plan. There was no shortage of arguments against it. First, he would be risking his life: India was an unpredictable country. One month earlier, Indira Gandhi had been assassinated because her army had killed far fewer people than had died at Bhopal. Some grief-crazed survivor might make an attempt on his life. Then again, under pressure from outraged public opinion, the Indian government might imprison him on arrival. Either way, his journey risked giving the unnecessary impression that the multinational was directly responsible for the tragedy, when it would be better to let its Indian subsidiary take all the blame. There was also the fact that there was every likelihood that the visit would be perceived as a provocation. Finally, it would expose the company’s chairman to dangerous confrontations with India’s new political authorities, and with the press, lawyers, judges, diplomats… . Even those in charge of the Indian subsidiary who had been consulted over the telephone showed little enthusiasm for the idea of having their top man arrive at the scene of the accident. Anderson, however, had made up his mind.

  “I’ve weighed all the risks,” he declared, “and I’m going.”

  On Thursday December 6 at five o’clock in the morning, a Gulfstream II twin-engine jet plane landed at Bombay’s Santa Cruz airport. No one took any notice of the three initials engraved on its crest, yet they belonged to the American company that had just inflicted death upon the country. Suffering from the flu, exhausted after the twenty-hour flight, Warren Anderson traveled discreetly to the luxurious Hotel Taj Mahal opposite the symbolic arch of the Gateway of India, where a suite had been reserved for him. The two Indian gentlemen there to welcome him, Keshub Mahindra, President of Union Carbide India Limited, and V.P. Gokhale, its managing director, brought him up to date with the latest figures from the accident. By then people were talking about three thousand dead and two hundred thousand people affected. Fortunately, the two Indians also had some good news: Arjun Singh, the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, and Rajiv Gandhi, head of the country’s government, had agreed to see Carbid
e’s chairman. That was one source of satisfaction for Anderson; he could at least convince them that his company was ready to compensate the victims,

  starting with at least five million dollars’ worth of emergency medical aid.

  In an effort to be discreet, Anderson and his two partners flew to Bhopal the next day in the Boeing 737 of a regular Indian Airlines flight. The company jet would rejoin the chairman in Delhi to take him back to the United States.

  On landing, the American noticed a small group of policemen on the tarmac. “How tactful of the local authorities to have sent us an escort,” he thought. As soon as the staircase was in position, two officers climbed on board and a voice came over the cabin address system. “Mr. Anderson, Mr. Mahindra and Mr. Gokhale are invited to leave the aircraft first.”

  Ah, the wonders of Indian hospitality! Police Chief Swaraj Puri, who on the night of the tragedy had watched his policemen flee, was at the foot of the plane in the company of the city’s collector to welcome the visitors with warm handshakes. All that was missing was the traditional garland of flowers and a pretty hostess to give them a welcoming tilak. Anderson and his companions took their seats in an official Ambassador brought to the foot of the steps. The car took off like the wind and left the airport via a service gate to avoid the pack of journalists waiting in the arrivals hall. The police chief and the collector followed in a second car.

  “Thank you for having gone to the trouble of fetching us,” Anderson said to the uniformed inspector sitting beside the driver.

  “It’s standard procedure, sir. There’s considerable tension in the city. It’s our duty to look after your safety.”

  Despite the tragic circumstances, the American took pleasure in being back in the city, the beauty of which he had so admired when the factory was inaugurated four years earlier. The minarets of the mosques casting their reflections in the waters of the lake, the numerous parks brimming with flowers, the picturesque old streets bustling with activity; everything seemed so normal that he found it difficult to believe that the city had just been through so dreadful a nightmare.

  The car climbed toward the Shamla Hills, entered the grounds of the research center and stopped in front of the company’s splendid guest house. Anderson was astonished to find two squads of policemen assembled on either side of the door to the establishment. An officer was waiting on the steps. As soon as the three visitors got out of the car, he stepped forward, came to attention and saluted. Then he announced, “I regret to inform you that you are all three under arrest.”

  Anderson and his partners started with surprise. The policeman continued, “Of course, this is a measure primarily for your own protection. You are free to come and go about your rooms, but not to go out or use the telephone, nor to receive visitors.”

  At that moment the police chief and the collector arrived. They were accompanied by a magistrate in his distinctive black robe. The American felt reassured; certainly there had been some misunderstanding. The officials were coming to set them free. In fact, the magistrate had been summoned to notify the three visitors of the reasons for their arrest. He informed them that by virtue of articles 92, 120B, 278, 304, 426 and 429 of the Indian penal code, they were accused of “culpable homicide causing death by negligence, making the atmosphere noxious to health, negligent conduct with respect to poisonous substances and mischief in the killing of livestock.” The first charge was punishable with life imprisonment, the others carried sentences of between three and six months.

  “Naturally, all those charges carry the right to bail,” intervened Keshub Mahindra, president of Carbide’s Indian subsidiary.

  “I’m afraid that is, unfortunately, not the case,” the magistrate replied.

  “So what about our meeting with Chief Minister Arjun Singh?” asked the American anxiously.

  “You will be notified about that as soon as possible,” the police chief informed him.

  The likely instigator of this brutal reception was absent from Bhopal. He had left the capital of Madhya Pradesh that very morning to join Rajiv Gandhi on an electoral tour. He had, however, left instructions with his spokesman. As soon as the three visitors had been arrested, the latter was to muster the press and deliver the news with maximum impact. Arjun Singh, though a long-standing friend of Carbide, expected to make the most of his audacity. By having the American company’s chairman and his Indian partners arrested, he was setting himself up as the avenger of the catastrophe’s victims, a move that could only help him in the next parliamentary election. “The government of Madhya Pradesh could not stand passively by and watch the tragedy,” his spokesman told journalists on his boss’s behalf. “It knows its duty to the thousands of citizens whose lives have been devastated by the criminal negligence of Carbide’s directors.”

  News of Warren Anderson’s arrest created a sensation from one end of the planet to another. This was the first time that a third world country had dared to imprison one of the West’s most powerful industrial leaders, even if his prison was a five-star guest house. In New Delhi there was great consternation. The Indian foreign affairs minister had promised the U.S. state department that nothing would impede Anderson’s journey. Quite apart from wishing to avoid an overt clash with the United States, Indian leaders were afraid that the incident would dissuade large foreign firms from setting up in India forever. The chief minister of Madhya Pradesh would have to release his prisoners immediately. Never mind justice; matters of state required it.

  Three hours later, Bhopal’s chief of police, assisted by several inspectors came to announce the release of the American prisoner. His Indian colleagues would be set free some time later.

  “A government airplane is waiting to take you to Delhi, from where you will be able to return to the United States,” he informed him.

  He then presented him with a document. To his stupefaction Anderson discovered that the sum of 25,000 rupees, about $2,000 at the time, had been posted by his company’s local office as bail. He had only to declare his civil status and give his signature and he would be free.

  “Twenty-five thousand rupees for the release of the head of a multinational responsible for the deaths of three thousand innocent people and poisoning two hundred thousand others! What does that make an Indian life worth?” inquired the Indian press the next day.

  The news created an immediate uproar in the pack of reporters jostling with each other at the entrance to the guest house. The most significant reaction, however, came from a crowd of demonstrators pressed to the railings of the research center. From the car bearing him away to the airport, Warren Anderson could see a forest of placards above their heads. The sight of the few words inscribed on the pieces of cardboard would haunt him for the remainder of his days. “Death to the killer Anderson!” shouted the people of Bhopal.

  The chairman of Union Carbide would never meet Rajiv Gandhi or any of his ministers. Only an official in the foreign office would agree to give him a brief audience, provided the press was not informed. The man who had hoped to change the living conditions of India’s peasants and who had wanted, as he had stated, to retire “in a blaze of glory,” left India broken, humiliated and despondent. He still did not know exactly what had happened on the night that spanned the second and third of December in India’s beautiful plant. As for his desire to provide the victims with aid, he had not even been able to discuss it. His journey had been a fiasco.

  A few minutes before he climbed into his Gulfstream II and took off for the United States, a journalist called out to him, “Mr. Anderson, are you prepared to come back to India to answer any legal charges?”

  Anderson turned pale. Then in a steady voice, he replied, “I will come back to India whenever the law requires it.”

  In the meantime, other Americans had been landing in Bhopal. Danbury had rapidly dispatched a group of engineers whose mission it was to shed light on the catastrophe. Naturally the factory’s last American works manager was part of that delegation. For Warren W
oomer, this return was a painful trial. “My wife Betty and I had spent two of the best years of our lives here. But now I’d come back to examine the remains of a factory, which had in a sense been my baby,” the engineer would later say. He had difficulty recognizing it. The ship he had left in good working order was now a spectacle of desolation that tore at his heartstrings. He made an effort to stay calm during his first encounter with Mukund. “Why was there so much MIC in the tanks? Why were all the safety systems deactivated?” Woomer fumed to himself. The inquiry team had agreed that they would avoid any confrontation. The important thing was to gather as much information as possible, not to create controversy.

  The task threatened to be impossible, however, because officers from India’s Criminal Bureau of Investigation had taken over the inquiry. Their chief, V.N. Shukla, a stiff-necked unsmiling man, began by prohibiting the Americans access to the plant.

  Then he told Woomer, “If I catch you, or any of your colleagues, interrogating any of the workmen, I’ll throw you in prison.”

  Worse yet the CBI was also in the process of moving the factory’s archives to a secret location. What were the American investigators supposed to do, given that they could not examine the site, question witnesses or refer to such crucial documents as reports of procedures carried out on the fatal night? Woomer felt overwhelmed. Especially as the situation was further complicated by the arrival of a team of Indian investigators headed by a leading national scientist, Professor Vardarajan, president of the Indian Academy of Science. How could they cope with this competition and the police restrictions? Woomer soon passed from feeling overwhelmed to despair.