– Why are Bhopal survivors still fighting for compensation? (BBC, Dec 2, 2014):
On the night of 2 December 1984, Lakshmi Thakur was putting her children to bed when her eyes started stinging.
She went outside to investigate, thinking a neighbour was frying chillies, and found people running in panic, clutching their faces.
Someone told her there had been an accident at Union Carbide India’s pesticide plant behind her house in Bhopal, the capital of the central state of Madhya Pradesh, and the burning wasn’t from cooking, but from leaking gas.
Lakshmi gathered her family and fled towards a bus stop by the factory. On the way, one of her sons started to vomit and another doubled over with diarrhoea. Her 20-year-old daughter didn’t live to see morning.
More than half a million people were poisoned by deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas that night. Several thousands of them died.