In a significant development in the ongoing criminal appeal related to the Bhopal gas disaster, senior advocate Anirban Roy, representing two of the convicted officials—J Mukund and S P Chaudhary—appeared before the Principal District Judge in Bhopal on Tuesday and argued for a retrial under Section 468 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC).
Roy contended that the CBI’s investigation into the 1984 industrial catastrophe was “malafide, malicious, motivated, and fraudulent.” To strengthen his plea for a retrial, he submitted a detailed compilation of previous cases where both high courts and the Supreme Court of India had permitted retrial under Section 464 of the CrPC, particularly when procedural errors or defective framing of charges affected the fairness of the original trial.
The Bhopal gas tragedy, one of the world’s worst industrial disasters, resulted in thousands of deaths and long-term health consequences for residents. In 2010, seven Indian officials of Union Carbide were convicted by the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) court and sentenced to two years of rigorous imprisonment. However, they were released on bail the same day and later appealed the verdict in 2011.
Roy maintained that the charges framed against the accused were based on a “botched-up” investigation by the CBI, and therefore lacked credibility. As part of his continuing arguments, he invoked Section 468 CrPC—which deals with the period of limitation for taking cognizance of offences—but framed it within the broader context of Section 464 CrPC, which allows courts to permit retrials if there is no failure of justice despite irregularities in framing charges.
The arguments for the retrial are expected to continue in court on Wednesday, as the high-profile case inches forward after over a decade of legal wrangling and nearly four decades since the disaster.
