Unfazed by the rejection of CBI's curative by the Supreme Court in Bhopal Gas tragedy case,government today said the option of seeking stringent punishment for the convicts was still open and it would be pursued. Law Minister Veerappa Moily also insisted that the curative petition had nothing to do with the compensation to be given to the victims which the government was handling separately. "The doors are still open as the issue of seeking a stringent punishment for the convicts in the local court can still be pursued.this has been made clear by the Supreme Court itself. The government would certainly exercise that option," Moily said. He was commenting on the Supreme Court rejecting the CBI petition for stringent punishment against the convicts in the 1984 tragedy. "We will go by the decision of the Supreme Court," he added. Giving the background of the decision to file the curative petition,Moily said after this matter came up,the Group of Ministers (GoM) had decided on it in its "due wisdom" after obtaining the opinion from the Attorney General. GoM was headed by Home Minister P Chidambaram. Soon after the SC verdict,Attorney General G E Vahanvati and CBI director A P Singh met Moily apparently to discuss the issue. Moily said the government and the CBI cannot be blamed for the delay in filing the curative petition as the matter was already pending in a lower court in Madhya Pradesh. When asked about his decision to draft a "stand-alone" law to deal with man-made disasters after the June 2010 court verdict let off the convicts with lighter punishments,he said the process was still on. The Law Minister said the proposed legislation would deal with issues relating to compensation in case of disasters. "The Law of Torts in India are not codified.there is a need to codify such laws and the Law Commission is already dealing with the issue," he said. Law of Torts deal with compensation in cases where respondents are not directly liable. In 1996,a two-judge Bench of the apex court,headed by the then Chief Justice A H Ahmadi had diluted the charges against the accused from Section 304 Part II of the IPC providing for a maximum of ten years imprisonment to Section 304(A) that deals with rash and negligence act with a maximum punishment of two years. The trial court in Bhopal on June 7,2010 had convicted and awarded two years imprisonment to the accused. The apex court had on August 31 last decided to re-examine its own judgement that led to lighter punishment of two years imprisonment for all the seven convicts.
