India's top court refuses to re-open Bhopal gas case

NEW DELHI: India's Supreme Court turned down on Wednesday a government demand to re-open the case into the Bhopal gas tragedy and hand harsher sentences to seven men convicted of negligence.

The 1984 Bhopal accident, blamed on Union Carbide, a US chemical group that ran the plant, killed thousands instantly and tens of thousands more from its lingering effects in the following years.

A government lawsuit had called for the seven company executives’ conviction last year of negligence to be tried on a more serious charge of "culpable homicide not amounting to murder," which carries a jail term of 10 years.

But the bid was rejected. "The curative petition is based on a plea that is wrong and fallacious," a five-judge bench in the top court said, adding that "no satisfactory explanation" had been given for filing the petition after so long.