In 1984, on the night of December 2/3, Union Carbide was responsible for the death of more than 8,000 people and injury to another 500,000 victims. It was the worst industrial catastrophe ever. The pesticides plant leaked 40 tonnes of lethal gas that engulfed the city within a radius of 40 sq. kms. People dropped and died even as they ran in terror. Today, 18 years since the disaster, the number of deaths are another 20,000. Although not a deliberate act of war, the enormity of negligence pre-and post-disaster, is a crime whose parallel can be drawn with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Unable to market the pesticide successfully, the company was cutting costs by reducing safety measures. During the routine maintenance that sparked the disaster, vital safety systems at the plant were either malfunctioning or turned off. Worse still, days after the disaster, Union Carbide’s director of Health, Safety and Environmental Affairs, Jackson B. Browning was still describing the deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC), an unstable and extremely dangerous gas, as “nothing more than a potent tear gas”.