By Rabindra Nath Choudhury

Copyright deccanchronicle

Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh high court has directed the trial courts to expeditiously dispose of cases relating to the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, observing that ‘Can’t keep matters pending for 40 years.’The high court also ordered the trial courts dealing with such cases to ‘send (a) monthly report to this court through the registrar general’. A division bench of the high court comprising Chief Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva and Justice Vinay Saraf made the observation on Wednesday while hearing a petition filed by the Bhopal Gas Peedit Sangharsh Sahyog Samiti seeking speedy disposal of several criminal revision appeals pending before the district courts. The high court’s observation came in response to the objections raised by the respondents to the petition contending that the Bhopal Gas Peedit Sangharsh Sahyog Samiti is ‘neither a witness nor a party’ to the proceedings. “We dispose of this petition with a direction to the concerned courts to dispose of the miscellaneous judicial case and also the criminal appeal, as expeditiously as possible, by giving priority to these cases over other cases”, the bench ruled. While hearing the petition, Chief Justice Sachdeva turned down the plea by the respondents for additional time for clarification, saying, “No, you can’t have matters pending for 40 years”. The petition cited the repeated transfer of the presiding judge leading to the delay in the trial of the cases. The appeals by the seven officials of the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), convicted in the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, have been heard in the court of the principal district and sessions judge since 2010. The judge of the court has been transferred no less than eight occasions before the hearings in the appeals were complete, the petitioner argued. Four of the seven convicted officials of the UCIL who were out on bail have since passed away, the petitioner said.