Shivaprasad Khened

This is a tribute to Dr Srinivasan Varadarajan, known for his exemplary, yet forgotten, role in leading his team from the front in successfully averting a possible second leakage of Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) deadly gas from the second tank and mitigating the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) that had killed thousands of people. He passed away last year on 11 May 2022, at the ripe age of 94.

The contributions of Dr Varadarajan and his team in handling the dangerous Bhopal gas tragedy have not been recognised well. As we commemorate his first Punyatithi this year, it is pertinent to remember                  Dr Varadarajan and his team, who worked at the site of the disaster, overlooking their personal safety during the most vulnerable time of the accident, when the leaked MIC gas from the first tank of the plant had already taken a huge toll.

India Today had front paged the Bhopal gas tragedy and covered it under the caption “City of Death” in their 31 December 1984 issue. The Time magazine too front paged this incident under the caption “India’s Disaster — The Night of Death” in their 14 December 1984 issue. Almost all the national and international dailies covered this horrendous manmade disaster. There was politics as well in the news coverage with The Wall Street Journal writing, “of those people killed, half would not have been alive today if it weren’t for that plant and the modern health standards made possible by wide use of pesticides”…read more on NOPR