In 1989, Union Carbide and Indian govt together reduced the number and extent of injury that Bhopal gas leak caused. A curative petition is now before Supreme Court. or 35 years, Bhopal and its thousands of victims of the world’s worst industrial disaster have waited for justice, often without much hope. Now the Supreme Court of India has a precious opportunity that may never be repeated, to set right a debilitating injustice committed on Indian citizens by not only the American corporation Union Carbide but also its own elected government. The two colluded to reduce the number and extent of injury that the gas leak caused on the health of the people in Bhopal. Nearly a decade after it was filed by the government of India under intense public pressure, curative petition number 345-347 is now before a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court. The judges must not only set the record straight on the number of deaths – four times more than what the government records have claimed – but also remove the injustice of categorising victim injuries as ‘minor or temporary’ to award compensation. The Supreme Court bench must ensure that the voices of those who have until now been silenced and disregarded are finally given equal hearing before the law. Union Carbide and Dow Chemical’s lawyers have moved to excise arguments made by survivor groups from the record by contesting their right to even appear in the case. The bench’s first task will be to adjudicate on whether, yet again, to exclude survivors’ voices. In 1989, the central government colluded with Union Carbide and the court did the settlement without consulting a single survivor. To make this travesty appear generous, just 3,000 deaths and 30,000 permanent injuries were attributed to a disaster for which a senior city pathologist had signed 10,000 death certificates inside the first two weeks alone. Among other wickedly false numbers justifying the sell-out were 70,000 temporary or minor injuries. Once the tortuous claims process was over, 93 per cent of the 5,74,376 successful claimants were categorised under ‘minor or temporary’ injuries and awarded a pitiful compensation of $494 each. Survivor organisations have presented documentary evidence that this temporary/minor injury category was first included in a scheme proposed by Union Carbide vice-president Rolf Towe through secret settlement negotiations that took place mere weeks after the company’s majority-owned factory had turned old Bhopal into a gas chamber. Unbeknown to India’s negotiators, 10 years before this proposition, Carbide’s internal safety report had concluded of exposure to methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas that ‘permanent residual injury is likely in spite of prompt treatment’.