Santwana Bhattacharya By

NEW DELHI: On August 11, 2011, when Congress stalwart, the late Arjun Singh, who was once the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh got up to speak in the Rajya Sabha on Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson’s stealthy exit from Bhopal and then India on a December night in 1984, five-six days after the poisonous fumes leaked from his factory killing 15,000 people, the first row of the then Treasury Benches were tense.

Pranab Mukherjee, then a trouble-shooter of the Manmohan Singh Government, who rushed in from the Lok Sabha, was seen sending a chit to the wily Thakur. No longer in the Cabinet, ailing Singh had then become a rarity in the House as well as in the political circles where he was known for his aces and capacity for palace intrigues.

Much to Mukherjee’s visible tension, Singh slowly rolled the chit into a ball and threw it into the aisle of the House, while continuing his laboured speech--in which recounted the days of the horrific Bhopal tragedy and Anderson’s safe passage despite the deaths and destruction his firm had caused.

A dramatic pause followed, Singh cleared his throat to say, “No, it was not Rajiv Gandhi’’, then PM, who had placed the “mysterious” phone call--the order from Delhi--on the basis of which Anderson secured his return. He was whisked away from the Union Carbide guesthouse where he was under house arrest, in the dead of the night in a state aircraft.

The front rows of the Upper House heaved a sigh of relief-- Parliamentary record had to be secured too. Singh hinted that the call had come from a bureaucrat in the MHA, implying his arch rival P V Narasimha Rao was involved. This was when Singh was giving his reply to Parliament, which was questioning how Anderson escaped being punished for the deaths of Indians caused by the gas leakage from Union Carbide factory, 27 years ago.

But who was the caller? Singh did not put a name then. And India is still searching for the answer--even though Singh, the only other person privy to the truth, passed away in 2011.

In his autobiography ‘A Grain of Sand…’ Singh had later claimed that then Union Home Secretary R D Pradhan was the person who had called him for Anderson’s release. But Pradhan denied it, saying he was then Maharashtra Chief Secretary and came to the MHA only a month after the tragedy.

Who was Singh protecting? Anderson had been arrested in Bhopal four days after the tragedy on December 7, 1984 on the ground of “criminal negligence”, but had been let off on a personal bond of just `25,000, and a promise that he will be back. He reneged, exited India quietly never to come back again.