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Bhopal
Introduction | Crucial elements | Alternative theories | Silver linings? | Find out more
Alternative theories
Throughout the course of its legal battles with Bhopal survivors' groups, Union Carbide always insisted that the accident at the plant had been caused by an act of sabotage. In a statement, Union Carbide asserted: 'Although it was not known at the time, the gas was formed when a disgruntled employee, apparently bent on spoiling a batch of MIC, added water to a storage tank. Carbide accepted moral responsibility for the incident despite it being an act of sabotage.'
According to Union Carbide, the saboteur entered the MIC unit during a tea break, disconnected a pressure indicator on the tank and attached a water hose to the opening, introducing water into the tank. This scenario has many flaws. Union Carbide did not explain exactly how a saboteur could slip thousands of litres of water into a tank without being detected. Moreover, the former vice president for health, safety and environmental affairs at Union Carbide, Jackson Browning, testified that 'the water-line couplings are incompatible with the gas-line couplings which go into the tank' suggesting that a water hose could not have been attached to the pressure-indicator opening.
The firm never released the name of the 'disgruntled employee'. And later its officials and lawyers suggested that the sabotage had not been the work of an employee but of a Sikh terrorist group known as 'Black June'.
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Introduction | Crucial elements | Alternative theories | Silver linings? | Find out more
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