Activists gathered in New York on Monday to demand that
Warren Anderson appear in an Indian criminal court to face charges stemming from the 1984 Bhopal industrial gas disaster that left an estimated 15,000 people dead. Anderson is the former head of Union Carbide, now a subsidiary of Dow Chemical. Members of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal and Kids for a Better Future attempted to hand-deliver copies of an Indian arrest warrant and criminal charges against Union Carbide and Anderson. The Indian government formally requested for Anderson’s extradition in 2003, but the US refused in 2004. Twelve-year-old Akash Viswanath Mehta of the group Kids for a Better Future spoke at Monday’s rally.

Akash Viswanath Mehta: “I would like today to appeal to Warren Anderson’s conscience, his guilt and his grief, and ask him to stand beside me. If he is truly haunted by the disaster that happened on his watch, which destroyed an entire community, I ask him to come forward and make a moral statement about what the right thing is for Dow and Union Carbide to do.”