Nadeem Uddin

In the early eighties Musharraf Ali bought a video camera to film weddings at his hometown of Bhopal in central India. On the night of December 2, 1984, forty-three tons of toxic gases leaked from massive storage chambers within Union Carbide’s Bhopal plant into the surrounding city, killing thousands overnight. Mr. Musharraf fled with his family and neighbors to safety. Two days later he returned to ground zero in Bhopal, moved to record with his ‘wedding camera’ everything he observed in the first days after the disaster. Fearing arrest and confiscation from Indian authorities, he kept the tapes for over twenty years without showing them to anyone. “Bhopal 84” makes this footage public for the first time.

For nearly 30 years, voices of ordinary Bhopalis have been raised demanding justice for the extraordinary biological and environmental damage of the Union Carbide plant disaster. For nearly 30 years, the cries for justice have been locked in an iron dance with the Indian and international courts, while the plant has remained sealed and untouched. “Bhopal 84” is a memoir formed out of first hand accounts of individuals who witnessed the tragedy that began on December 2, 1984. Interviews feature Wyatt Andrews and Tom Hopkins, American reporters who covered the disaster for CBS, and accounts from the pedestrians and inhabitants of Bhopal who were there, who both remember and question the tragedy, the government response, and the public health aftermath.

What happened in Bhopal?
On the night of December 2nd, 1984, the Union Carbide chemical pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, began leaking 43 tons of the deadly gas Methyl-Isocyanate. None of the six safety systems designed to contain such a leak were operational, allowing the gas to spread throughout the city of Bhopal. Half a million people were exposed to the gas and 30,000 have died to date as a result of their exposure. More than 150,000 people still suffer from ailments caused by the accident and the subsequent pollution at the plant site.