40 yrs after tragedy struck Bhopal, no end to suffering

Just after midnight as poisonous plumes of smoke wafted through Madhya Pradesh's capital city Bhopal four decades ago, Gas Devi was born, gasping for every breath.

- HTC and agencies

Her feeble cries were drowned out by the screams of men, women and children as they ran to escape the cloud of toxic methyl isocyanate gas leaking from the Union Carbide factory on the night of December 2, 1984, engulfing large swathes of residential pockets.

Some 5,295 people were killed in the immediate aftermath, and up to 25,000 are estimated to have died overall in the world's deadliest industrial disaster that continues to haunt the lives of those like Devi and countless others born with deformities since that fateful night.

Devi, a daily wage labourer, has constant pain in her chest, one of her lungs is not developed fully and she keeps falling sick. "My life is a living hell," Devi told news agency AFP, speaking at her shanty in Bhopal, the capital of the central state of Madhya Pradesh.

Even if she wanted, she cannot forget the night she was born. "My parents named me Gas," she said, her eyes welling up. "I believe this name is a curse. I wish I had died that night".

Nathuram Soni, now 81, was among the first to rush out.

"People were frothing from their mouths. Some had defecated, some were choking in their own vomit," said Soni.

A handkerchief tied over his nose, Soni used his pushcart to carry his wailing neighbours, many of them infants, to hospital.

In 1985, the Centre enacted the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster (Processing of Claims) Act, granting itself exclusive rights to represent the victims and handle compensation claims. Despite initial demand of $3.3 billion, the government settled, albeit out of court, with Union Carbide in 1989 for $470 million.