Rajkumar Keswani, 71, was the winner of the B.D. Goenka Award for excellence in journalism in 1985.
New Delhi: The Bhopal Union Carbide toxic gas leakage on the night of 2-3 December 1984, which, according to official estimates left 571,478 maimed and killed 3,787 persons (unofficial tally, over 8,000) may have been averted if the timely warning by Rajkumar Keswani in 1982 in newspaper articles been heeded to. Winner of the B.D. Goenka Award for excellence in journalism in 1985, Keswani succumbed to Covid-19 on 21 May: the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. The Bhopal disaster was the first challenge Gandhi had faced after the anti-Sikh riots as he took over the mantle of prime ministership. The nascent government did not acquit itself well.
Warned by his friends who worked in the plant about the hazard of possible leakage of MIC (methyl iscocyanate) gas, Keswani wrote in a Bhopal weekly “Rapat” on 26 September 1982 “Bachaiye huzoor is shahar ko bachaiye”. He repeated his warning in two other articles on 1 and 8 October 1982. His report was picked up and reported in Indian Express. Having studied the toxicity of MIC, Keswani’s concern emanated from the finding that MIC broke down into several gases, including phosgene—the gas used in Nazi gas chambers during the Second World War. MIC was “heavier than air” and its capability of causing mass mayhem was humungous, Keswani pointed out.
Alas Union Carbide, a subsidiary of an American company and the state government preferred to look the other way, and on 2-3 December 1984, the disaster happened. Accepting the B.D. Award in 1985, which the young Bhopal local journalist shared with the then Editor-in-Chief of The Tribune, Prem Bhatia—a doyen among scribes—Keswani lamented that he might be the first to receive the award for “such a spectacular journalistic failure”. “I am a Cassendra, a lone voice in the wilderness—had I succeeded in cautioning, no one would have taken note,” said Keswani.
Apart from the deaths and the injuries, which made old Bhopal a dead city in 1984, the way the Union government handled the aftermath left a trail of questions. Union Carbide (US) chairman Warren Anderson flew into Bhopal on 6 December. The CBI, which had taken over the investigation that very day, arrested him. He was taken to a Dak Bungalow in the outskirts of Bhopal. After a few hours, he was flown to Delhi in the Madhya Pradesh government’s aircraft, a King Air-200C, with the call sign VT-EID. Pilot Syed Hafiz Ali later told an enquiry panel that instructions for the flight had come from CM Arjun Singh. He said that till he landed in Delhi, he did not know the passenger was Warren Anderson.
Anderson, who was on bail, flew out of India, never to return and submit himself for prosecution, which resulted in the June 2010 conviction of seven: including the nonegerian Mahindra & Mahindra shepherd, Keshub Mahindra, who was non-executive chairman of Union Carbide (India) in 1984. The appeal against the convictions is pending for the past 11 years. No one went to jail. As for Anderson,his death at age 92 in 2011 closed all litigation, including one filed in US courts under US Alien Torts Claims Act.
Arjun Singh wrote in his memoirs “A grain of sand in the hourglass of time” that his government had received a phone call from Union Home Secretary, who said he was speaking on the authority of Home Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao.
The nascent government of Rajiv Gandhi was assumed to have succumbed to persuasion from American quarters. The then SP (Bhopal) Swaraj Puri told an enquiry panel: “We arrested him on written orders; released him on verbal instructions.” The then DM of Bhopal Moti Singh said that usually when someone is detained in a Dak Bungalow, the telephone is disconnected. In case of Anderson, it was not and he called his friends in the US and set in motion the process of his departure from India while he was charged by CBI of manslaughter.
Apart from journalism, Rajkumar Keswani was a known connoisseur of Hindi film music—his collection of discs and cassettes of songs dating over seven decades was a talk of the town in Bhopal. His death at age 71 perhaps puts estoppels on an era of journalism when investigation was the norm as against the present trend of insinuation.