Pithampur protest rages, two ‘self-immolate’ over Carbide waste burning
The government has put incineration plans on the back burner
Bhopal
The ghost of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy returned on Friday as two men poured an inflammable liquid over themselves before being engulfed by flames at a protest over the proposed incineration of Union Carbide waste in the industrial town of Pithampur.
Video footage emerging from the scene suggests that the two may have caught fire accidentally when people tried to snatch a cigarette lighter one of them had pulled out of his pocket.
The two, identified as Rajkumar Raghuvanshi and Raju Patel, were later admitted to the Burns Ward at the Choithram Hospital in Indore, where they are currently being treated.
Officials at the hospital, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the two are out of danger and will undergo surgical procedures on Saturday.
Despite government efforts to allay health and environmental concerns a day earlier, Pithampur erupted in protests on Friday, with activists pushing back police cordons to reach the Ramky Enviro plant, where the waste is proposed to be incinerated.
The waste, a mix of leftovers and sludge from the storage site where it had languished for four decades, arrived in Pithampur in a protected convoy from the defunct Union Carbide factory in Bhopal.
Speaking hours after the convoy’s arrival in Pithampur, Chief Minister Mohan Yadav and Urban Administration Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya sought to reassure the people of Pithampur, where activists had called for a day-long shutdown on Friday.
Vijayvargiya, also the guardian minister for Dhar of which Pithampur is a part, visited the burn victims at the hospital on Friday evening in an expression of solidarity with family members.
Authorities said the situation in the city remained tense after police resorted to a lathi charge and water cannons to disperse the protest.
While the government has repeatedly asserted that the shifting of the waste complies with a December 3 order from the High Court, activists blame the government for pushing ahead with the removal and incineration of the waste, despite the risks of soil and groundwater contamination.
In its order, the High Court had questioned the government’s reluctance to act, despite scientific evidence from the trial burning of 10 metric tonnes of waste in 2015, and set a four-week deadline for the government to take action and submit a report on the matter.
Though the government maintains that the waste is safe and does not pose environmental or health risks, activists describe the studies as inadequate and are calling for further research and safer disposal methods.
The waste in question consists of residues found on the Union Carbide factory campus, which was shut down in the aftermath of the gas disaster that claimed thousands of lives on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984.
