BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY: ‘I delivered one twin in bathroom, lost both of them’

Shobha Soni, 66, was pregnant with twins, Soni fled her home that 1984 night with her husband and three children; she lost her twins soon after.

That night, Shobha Soni, heavily pregnant with twins, fled with her husband and son from their house in Chhola Mandir, not far from the Union Carbide Plant. In the melee that followed, she soon got separated from her husband, though she didn’t let go of her son Pramod, then 10 years old. “I soon started coughing and vomiting and collapsed in a field while trying to run. So I told my son to run too,’’ says the 66-year-old.  She was reunited with her son and husband the following morning.

Then followed a seemingly endless chain of tragedies. Soni, who was six weeks pregnant at the time of the gas leak, lost both babies after a premature delivery one morning at her Chhola Mandir home. “I delivered one baby in the bathroom of my home and was rushed to a government hospital in the city where I lost the other baby too,’’ says Soni, now 66.

She blames the tragedy for having “wrecked” her family. Her husband Devilal, a book vendor, died a year ago while one of her two daughters — both born after the gas leak — died of burns. She also fell out with her son, now 40, who works as an autorickshaw driver.

Soni now lives alone in Jain Colony, Old Bhopal. A regular face in protests organised by the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan, she spends most of her time visiting a rehabilitation centre for women affected by the tragedy.