Bhopal: The counsel for former UCIL Managing
Director and five others accused in the 1984 Bhopal Gas
Tragedy case today said his clients were not responsible for
the industrial disaster and being made scapegoats.
D Prasad, counsel for Vijay Gokhale, the then Managing
Director of Union Carbide of India Limited (UCIL) and five
other accused, told Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohan P Tiwari
that the CBI had wrongly made out a case against his clients.
He said that his clients were not responsible for the
leak from the UCIL`s Bhopal Factory (now defunct) which killed
and maimed thousands of persons on the intervening night of
December two - three of 1984.
The defence counsel said that his clients were not in any
way responsible for the factory`s defective design as pointed
out by the scientists who visited the plant after the tragedy.
Prasad said that the factory had come up before his
clients joined it.
However, Prasad contended that no one pointed out that
the design of the factory was defective before the tragedy.
It was only after the tragedy the government scientists
visited the factory to pronounce it defective, he said.
Prasad said that the design and the tanks of the factory
were akin to that of the factory of Union Carbide Corporation
in USA.
The court has fixed May 3 as the next date of hearing on
which it will hear the counsel for the accused Keshub
Mahendra, the then Chairman of UCIL and the company.
PTI
