No, I don't think the Bhopal Gas Victims has got any semblance of justice, what they had to go through for twenty-six years is a shame for the Nation!
The Bhopal episode is actually multi-faceted: the legal issues, the health issues, the compensation issues and anyway you look at it, it is a complete failure or plain insensitivity from all, be it the local and central government or the judiciary or even the investigating agencies as well.
Since justice is not only confined in the legal parameters, so we have to take all of these into account. Firstly, talking of the legal issue, the prime accused Warren Anderson, CEO, Union Carbide was allowed free passage by the then central government of India about which the political mud-slinging is still going on. Those officials of Union Carbide India who were prosecuted firstly under section 304 of the IPC, which is the section for culpable homicide not amounting to murder with a maximum sentence up to 10 years in prison, the supreme court judgment of 1996 converted it to 304A of the IPC, which is the section for causing death due to negligence and maximum sentence up to 2 years in prison, therefore diluting the charges.
There has been a massive concerted effort from the Governments' side to demean the magnitude of this disaster, starting from denying ampules of sodium thiosulphate to the victims to stopping ICMR from continuing its research. Therefore if we look at the health issues, it's a disgustingly shocking story of how those people were just left to die, to say in short! Since the total area is still very much toxic, therefore more and more people are either dying from diseases like cancer and brain tumors or getting crippled children because of that, making it worse and worse everyday. I'd like to add one thing here, the Bhopal Memorial Hospital was instituted only to treat Gas victims, but now it treats private patients more, lacks essential treatment facilities and treats the Gas victims and their family with utmost humiliation, as per their version.
If we look at the compensation again it seems so shameful. Firstly, Union Carbide was let off with a meager compensation of 470 million U.S.Dollars, not taking into account the long-term effects of the disaster, which was only 15% of the claim that was made by the Indian Government and even approved by the Supreme Court. Even that did not reach to all the people, as I've heard in the media most of it is still lying unused in the bank, only few people has got a few thousand rupees. This is the price our own Government has selected for more than 20,000 deaths of its own people and 500,000 affected, does Indian lives get any cheaper for the multinational companies liking, eying India as business destination!
Regarding the package of compensation decided by the present GoM, the activists say it does not include 90% of those affected as it only includes those affected by the Gas leak and not those crippled or dead from the toxic wastes, the number of which is huge and even that money is going to come from the average Indian Taxpayer's Pocket and not from the coffers of Dow Chemicals, which presently owns Union Carbide.
So to sum it up all in a line: since there has been a huge uproar from the Nation regarding this grand injustice, the Government has got into swing for damage-control exercise to hoodwink the people of this Nation one last time and send this lingering issue into the deep freezer for eternity!
