“You want Osama, give us Anderson”

The December 1984 leak from the Union Carbide India Limited Plant in Bhopal is considered to be the world’s worst industrial disaster. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, photojournalist Raghu Rai entered Bhopal and produced images that were stark, unfiltered, and impossible to ignore. His photographs of mass funerals, blinded survivors, and children scarred by exposure cut through official minimisation and corporate denial. At a time when data was scarce and institutions were evasive, these images became a form of testimony.

Four decades after the lethal gas leak claimed over 22,000 lives, criminal proceedings persist at the District and Sessions Court, with not a single accused behind bars to date. While litigation drags on, Rai’s photographs form the moral and evidentiary foundation for a movement that continues to fight for justice against the state-corporate nexus.

Published in 2002 as Exposure: Portrait of a Corporate Crime, Rai’s stark black and white images captured not only the immediate horror of the gas leak, but also the enduring violence that followed. From a grieving father at his child’s grave and a man carrying his dead wife on his shoulders, to images of people struggling in hospitals, his work made visible the long-term medical and socio-economic damage. He documented individuals like Nanko, a labourer who could no longer work due to lung damage, and Sunil Verma, who died by suicide at the age of 34 after losing seven members of his family and suffering from depression and schizophrenia.

These images exposed the profound gap between lived suffering and the narrow frameworks used to determine compensation. They reinforced a central claim of the movement: that Bhopal was not a one-time exposure but a lifelong and intergenerational catastrophe. 

Rai’s image of women holding placards reading “You want Osama, Give us Anderson” or “Union Carbide & Anderson: Wanted for Homicide” exposed the double standards of global justice. CEO of UCC at the time of the Bhopal disaster, Warren Anderson fled the country after he was released on a bail bond of ₹25,000 within hours of being arrested on non-bailable charges. After multiple ignored summons, the United States denied India’s extradition request in 2004 and Anderson lived a free man until his death in 2014. The photograph distilled a complex legal and geopolitical failure into a single, undeniable frame—while corporate crimes are the most ubiquitous offences with the gravest of consequences, they are the least reported, the least prosecuted and the least likely to result in convictions.

The failure was laid bare again through Rai’s photographs of children born with deformities. Challenging official attempts to disconnect the prolonged health crisis from the original exposure, these images revealed the intergenerational consequences of industrial “negligence and greed for profit maximization”. In doing so, they pointed to the inadequacy—and at times complicity—of regulatory, scientific, and prosecutorial institutions that repeatedly succumbed to political and corporate pressure.

Rai captured the prolonged ordeal of justice itself with images of endless queues outside claims courts, survivors clutching files, and an old man navigating the legal system alongside a lawyer.

In these images, the courtroom was not a site of resolution but of attrition, where survivors were forced to repeatedly prove that their injuries were caused by methyl isocyanate exposure.

It also showed the world that even though Govt of India took the responsibility of Bhopal survivors  as ‘parens patriae’ it succumbed to political clout, downplayed damages only to help Union Carbide escape its civil and criminal liability.

When Rai returned to Bhopal on the 30th anniversary in 2014, he documented a movement still fighting to correct the record. Survivors demanded that the Government of India present accurate figures of deaths and injuries in its curative petition—based on hospital records and Indian Council of Medical Research data. Rai photographed women staging die-ins and chaining themselves to the Chief Minister’s residence in Madhya Pradesh, with banners that read: “Sahi aankde, sahi muavaza dena hoga” (Correct figures, appropriate compensation must be given). He captured both resistance and continuity.

Rai’s later work brought another dimension into sharp focus: the persistence of toxic contamination in Bhopal’s soil and groundwater. Through images of communities living beside the abandoned factory, children playing near toxic waste, and residents dependent on contaminated water sources, Rai showed that the disaster continued as a slow, invisible violence. These photographs challenged official claims of containment and reinforced survivors’ demands for remediation, clean water, and accountability for the long-term environmental damage caused by Union Carbide and Dow Chemical.

Across decades, Raghu Rai’s photographs have functioned as a parallel archive to legal proceedings—one that resists erasure, challenges official narratives, and keeps the human cost of Bhopal visible. In courtrooms where evidence is delayed, diluted, or denied, his images have sustained public pressure and global attention. Ultimately, they reinforce a central truth: the 1984 Bhopal disaster is not a closed case but an ongoing injustice—and one of the world’s longest-running struggles for environmental and corporate accountability.

Rachna Dhingra is a social activist who has worked closely with those affected by the poison of Union Carbide and Dow Chemical in Bhopal.