CEO blamed for Bhopal gas disaster dies

Warren Anderson, the chairman and chief executive of the U.S. company blamed for a 1984 poisonous gas leak that killed thousands of people in central India, died in a nursing home on Sept. 29, according to public records reported this week.

The New York Times on Thursday reported Anderson’s death at the age of 92. He had been living in a retirement facility in Vero Beach, Florida.

Anderson was a wanted man in India for his role as head of the Union Carbide Corp., the company whose pesticide plant in Bhopal in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh experienced a gas leak on the night of Dec. 2, 1984.

The local government says the disaster killed at least 3,787 people that December, but unofficial estimates place the number at more than 5,000.

Many more died of long-term illnesses resulting from the incident, widely regarded as one of the world's worst industrial accidents.

Anderson visited Bhopal after the disaster and was arrested, but was released after paying bail. He escaped attempts to bring him to trial, although other local executives were convicted.

Local Indian newspaper The Hindu said the Indian government had made multiple attempts to extradite him.

Activists such as Satinath Sarangi, founder of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, have campaigned for years for the survivors of the tragedy. 

Sarangi said the news of Anderson's death would not console survivors.

"They feel it is a matter of great shame — that this worst corporate criminal in history should have died in shackles. He should have been in bars," he told Al Jazeera.

"The U.S. government has been protecting this corporate criminal for the last 22 years.”

Sarangi said Bhopal is still coping with public health ramifications.

"The next generation is also marked by Carbide's poisons,” he said. “Tens of thousands of children have growth and development disorders."

Al Jazeera and wire services