Activists slam Bhopal gas tragedy film for letting 'culprit US company off the hook'

Canberra, Dec 31 (ANI:) Campaigners working with the survivors of 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy have slammed a movie being made on the incident, saying that the film would be an insult to the victims of the world's worst industrial disaster.

Ravi Kumar, the Indian director of the film 'Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain', starring Martin Sheen and Mischa Barton, said that he wanted to depict what happened on the night of December 2-3, 1984, because the same set of circumstances is still at play in the world, making the story a universal one rather than purely Indian.

The film is due to be released next year, but Rachna Dhingra of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal said her group and others plan to stop its screening, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

"I've seen the script and it's an insult because it blames Union Carbide India for the gas leak while letting the parent company in the US off the hook," the paper quoted Dhingra, as saying.

"It shows Warren Anderson [chief executive at the time, played by Sheen] like some saintly guy who wanted to help but wasn't able to," she said.

Dhingra said she had expressed her misgivings to Sheen, who initially had been supportive, but both Sheen and Kumar had later stopped communicating with her.

Kumar is, however, undisturbed by the protests. He said it is obvious that Anderson must shoulder the responsibility for the disaster, adding that Sheen rewrote some scenes to make it clear that Anderson was culpable.

"But making Anderson a James Bond-like villain would have been counter-productive, and may have made the film look like a Bollywood movie, which would have isolated non-Indian audiences, and this is very much an international film with universal relevance," he added.

Over 3000 people died after gas leaked from a storage tank at the factory, which made pesticide.

The horrific death toll was partly the result of a wind that night which spread the fumes further than they would otherwise have gone. According to the report, the title 'A Prayer for Rain' refers to the fact that if there had been rain that night, far fewer would have died. (ANI)