On this 25th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, the victims and their families deserve justice.

On Dec. 3, 1984, a gas leak at a pesticide plant owned by Union Carbide, a U.S. multinational, in the central Indian city of Bhopal caused the deaths of several thousand residents within a matter of days. Over the past quarter of a century, a total of 25,000 people have lost their lives as a result of the world’s worst industrial disaster. Hundreds of thousands of Bhopal residents have experienced health problems, often severe.

And their misery never ends. The factory site remains contaminated, heavily polluting the environment for nearby dwellers. These families “have no option but to drink the available water and they complain of aches and pains, rashes, fevers, eruptions of boils, headaches, nausea, lack of appetite, dizziness and constant exhaustion,” the Brisbane Times of Australia recently reported. “Lead, mercury and organochlorines have been found in the milk of nursing mothers living near the factory, with the result that women are terrified to breastfeed their babies.”

Even though Union Carbide blamed sabotage by a disgruntled employee, a court affidavit by Edward Munoz, former managing director of Union Carbide India, later revealed that the company’s decision to store the deadly Methyl Isocyanate gas in massive tanks for efficiency reasons was the reason for the catastrophe.

Dow Chemical, which has purchased Union Carbide, refuses to be accountable, however. It claims that Union Carbide did all it could and that Dow is not responsible because it didn’t own the company at the time of the disaster.

But in buying up Union Carbide, Dow Chemical assumed all of Union Carbide’s liabilities, as well as its assets.

More than two dozen members of Congress in June requested Dow to decontaminate the factory premises and to help the survivors. “Dow Chemical has yet to be brought to justice and the victims are yet to see justice done,” said Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., who initiated the letter. “Survivors are waiting for needed medical care and fair compensation for their losses and their waiting has gone on for 25 years too long.”

Shockingly, in all these years, no one has been held criminally responsible for Union Carbide’s act of massive negligence. The company grudgingly paid out $470 million to the victims, a woefully insufficient amount. The company’s CEO at the time, Warren Anderson, was arrested during a visit to India and charged with manslaughter in the days following the accident. He was released on bail and has been on the lam ever since. This July, Bhopal’s chief magistrate issued another arrest warrant for him, but the United States has been not too willing to apprehend or extradite him.

Dow Chemical needs to completely own up to its responsibility as Union Carbide’s parent company. The victims of Bhopal and their families have waited far too long and suffered far too much.

Amitabh Pal is the co-editor of the Progressive Media Project. He can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.