Bhopal gas tragedy: Ex-CJI now in row

Amid continuing blame-game over the Bhopal gas tragedy,the then Chief Justice of India A M Ahmadi was at the centre of the controversy with Law Minister Veerappa Moily saying the Supreme Court verdict had reduced the incident to a "car accident".

Amid continuing blame-game over the Bhopal gas tragedy,the then Chief Justice of India A M Ahmadi was at the centre of the controversy with Law Minister Veerappa Moily saying the Supreme Court verdict had reduced the incident to a “car accident”.

Ahmadi,who is blamed for diluting the charges in the case,reacted by saying that the government could not escape the responsibility when such an incident happens.

The spat between Moily and Ahmadi came even as the then Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Arjun Singh continued to be targeted by Congress leaders over Warren Anderson’s escape.

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Senior Congress leader Satyavrat Chaturvedi said Arjun Singh had earlier admitted that the decision to allow Anderson to leave the country was taken at state level and said he should speak out so that the “names of others are not unnecessarily dragged into the issue.”

Singh remained incommunicado and did not even turn up at a function organised by a media group to honour him with ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ for his “contribution to Urdu language”.

Moily regretted in Bangalore that judiciary had diluted the the charges in the gas leakage case.

“CBI had filed charges under (IPC) Section 304 (II) under which the maximum punishment is 10 years. But the highest court (headed by Ahmadi),in a review petition,converted it to 304 (A) which is actually meant for a car accident,truck accident,” the Law Minister told reporters in Bangalore.

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Section 304 (II) of the IPC is culpable homicide not amounting to murder while 304(A) is causing death due to negligence.

The offence of this dimension,I am very sorry,it has been reduced,” Moily said.

Reacting to efforts to put the onus of responsibility on him,Ahmadi said,”the government is always responsible. When something of this nature happens to the people of the country,does the government say it has no responsibility? I am unable to understand that”.

When his attention was drawn to experts and former CBI officials dubbing the 1996 verdict diluting the charges as absolutely wrong,the former CJI said “I cannot say anything about it”.

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