The story is a night-time industrial release into adjoining wards, not a natural disaster and not a war.
The legal story is a 1985 statute, a 1989 cheque and a 2010 two-year sentence — three endings that do not agree.
Beats
- A tank in a crowded city
UCIL stored MIC at a plant whose neighbours had grown around it. By December 1984 several layers of protection on the MIC system were out of normal service, according to later official and civil records.
- The night of 2–3 December
An uncontrolled release moved with the winter air over nearby settlements. Hospitals filled before dawn. Municipal death registration could not keep a complete night list.
- Anderson’s brief arrest
UCC’s chief executive flew to Bhopal, was arrested and released, and left India. Extradition requests later failed. English headlines made that departure a permanent character note.
- India takes the claims
The 1985 Act displaced individual suits in favour of the Union as parens patriae. United States courts then sent the mass tort home on forum grounds.
- Settlement, reduction, conviction
1989 brought US$470 million. 1996 brought a thinner criminal charge. 2010 brought two-year sentences. The site’s waste stayed on the map.
Bhopal’s story is a known leak and an unfinished assignment of duty among plant, parent, state and successor.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.