Rajiv Gandhi Govt Ordered Anderson’s Release: CIA Docs
Former chairman of Union Carbide Corp USA Warren Anderson, who ordered cost-cutting in company’s Bhopal plant resulting in tragic gas leak killing nearly 15000 people, was released after being arrested on December 7, 1984 on the Central government’s orders to Madhya Pradesh, said media reports.
Declassified CIA documents dated December 8, 1984, a day after Anderson left India, reveals this fact, reports said.
According to documents, Rajiv Gandhi’s government ordered Anderson’s quick release feeling that the Madhya Pradesh government was overly keen on scoring political points against Union Carbide, said reports.
The Centre felt that public pressure after the gas tragedy would force a new government to move cautiously in developing foreign investment with multinationals, especially US companies.
The documents said that with elections round the corner, politicians at the state and Centre were attempting to shift blame from themselves to UCIL (Union Carbide India Ltd.) and wring compensation from the parent company, reports said.
Former bureaucrat Moti Singh, District Collector of Bhopal at the time of gas leak, has said that Anderson was taken into custody at around 2 pm on December 7 but he was released the same day and flew out of Bhopal in a state government plane to New Delhi.
He claims that the then Chief Secretary of the state government ordered him to release Anderson.
Congress leader Arjun Singh, who was Chief Minister Madhya Pradesh in 1984, is believed to have ordered his officials to release Anderson but Digvijay Singh, his party colleague from the state, told a news channel that the MP government ‘only implemented’ the Centre’s instructions in the gas leak case.
(Based on internet reports)
