NEW DELHI: In what could be a callous criminal cost-cutting measure, the Union Carbide management had apparently brushed aside warnings about leaking pipes in the Bhopal plant needing urgent replacement and told the staff to keep the factory running by welding the damaged ones.

One such damaged pipe probably allowed water to enter the chemical storage chamber leading to leakage of deadly methyl iso-cyanate gas on December 2-3, 1984, killing over 15,000 people and maiming lakhs. This will be cited by the Centre to file a curative petition in the apex court for review of its infamous 1996 judgment diluting the charges against the accused from the stringent Section 304-II to Section 304A of IPC.

The other action in the court front recommended by the GoM headed by home minister P Chidambaram were - a curative petition seeking enhancement of compensation from the $470 million apex court guided settlement between Union Carbide and the Union of India; a revision petition before the Jabalpur High Court or an appeal before the sessions court to direct the trial court to consider the enormity of evidence for a fresh trial under Section 304-II and Section 326 (causing grievous hurt) and make the sentences run concurrently as well as enhance the paltry fine imposed on the convicts.

The recommendations for fresh legal action were based on the evidence dug out from the Bhopal gas leak case trial records. Attorney General G E Vahanvati had made a crisp note for law minister Veerappa Moily who placed it before the GoM.

The GoM agreed that this instance of criminal negligence could be one of the major grounds for seeking review of the 1996 apex court judgment diluting charges against the accused from the stringent Section 304-II to a lighter Section 304A of the Indian Penal Code.

The curative petition, likely to be drafted by the AG, would prominently cite the statement of a prosecution witness, Kewal Krishan Parekh, who had deposed that UCC had kept a tight leash on spending for maintenance and instructed the staff to weld the damaged pipes which needed replacement.

Apart from that the government has also dug into the SC's 1996 judgment which itself was convinced that there were serious issues relating to maintenance of the plant that led to the disaster.

The GoM noticed that the Bench of then Chief Justice A M Ahmedi and Justice S B Majmudar, before quashing the stringent charges under Section 304-II, had in a stand-alone paragraph of the judgment aptly stated that prima facie evidence in the case showed that there were not only structural defects but even operational deficiencies in the working of the Bhopal plant which resulted in the `grim' tragedy.

This contradiction could have been a solid ground for filing of a revision petition, which was never done by the prosecuting agency. Given the lapse of time, the GoM felt a curative petition was the only way out to seek correction of a mistaken conclusion arrived by the apex court in 1996.

The GoM also found additional evidence to support the decision to take the curative route to correct a 26-year-old blunder by the SC:

* Much before the incident, an advocate had issued notices to UCC management pointing out evidence of leakages as also press reports since 1982 warning of a possible disaster because of serious problems in the plant.

* Defence witness, who was brought before the trial court to help the management prove that samples from the plant were regularly taken by inspectors, had blurted out in cross-examination that no samples were taken between October and December 1984.

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