Bhopal: The 25th anniversary of the Union Carbide gas disaster

EXTERIOR OF UNION CARBIDE FACTORY..BHOPAL CHEMICAL DISASTER, INDIA - 1984.... Photograph: Sipa Press/guardian.co.uk

Picture dated 04 December 1984, shows man carrying the body of a victim of the Bhopal tragedy. A poison gas leak from the Union Carbide factory killed 2,500 persons and injured around 10,000. On background is the site of the factory. Photograph: BEDI/guardian.co.uk

Dead animals lies closed to Union Carbide Factory poisoned by the chemical released Dec 1984. Photograph: Sipa Press/guardian.co.uk

The Aftermath Of The Disaster..union Carbide Factory Chemical Disaster, Bhopal, India - Dec 1984. Photograph: Sipa Press /guardian.co.uk

03 Dec 1984, Bhopal, India --- Bhopal victim. Following a leak in a reservoir at the Union Carbide factory producing insecticides, a cloud of cyanide gas spread over Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh. Hundreds died from asphyxiation and thousands suffered side effects in the town that houses 700,000 inhabitants. The directors of the factory have been arrested. Photograph: Kapoor Baldev/guardian.co.uk

In a file picture taken on December 4, 1984 victims who lost their sight in the Bhopal posion gas tragedy sit outside the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal. Survivors of the world's worst industrial disaster in India's Bhopal city are outraged by plans to throw open the site to visitors 25 years after the tragedy that killed thousands. Announced this week by state authorities, the sealed pesticide plant that leaked deadly methyl isocyanate gas on December 3, 1984 is to be opened to the public in December 2009 to coincide with the 25th anniversary. Photograph: guardian.co.uk

An unidentified man sits November 30, 1994 in Bhopal, India. Ten years ago a gas leak from the Union Carbide chemical plant killed several thousand people and blinded many of its survivors. Photograph: Pablo Bartholomew/guardian.co.uk

11 Dec 1984, --- Mother Teresa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, visits victims of the Bhopal disaster in hospital. She went to comfort patients of the Hamidia hospital who suffered from the toxic gas that leaked from the Union Carbide plant. To the victims, she said simply " What I am trying to do for you is normal. It is what I've always done." Photograph: Kapoor Baldev/guardian.co.uk

Children run through the streets December 6, 1984 in Bhopal, India. The Union Carbide Corporation leaked a poisonous gas into the city, killing 4,000 people immediately and severely injuring 520,000 people. Photograph: Pablo Bartholomew/guardian.co.uk

December 15 or 16, 1984, Bhopal, India --- Eleven days after a cloud from the Union Carbide plant carrying methyl isocyanate gas seriously injured 20,000 people and killed 3000, the resumption of work has been announced, provoking a new exodus. A total of 200,000 persons have fled Bhopal (which had 800,000 inhabitants). The train station is permanently full as entire families leave. Photograph: Alain Nogues/guardian.co.uk

10 Dec 1984 --- Chairperson of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson, upon his return from India where he had been arrested for Union Carbide's role/ownership of the pesticide plant which leaked toxic methyl isocynanade killing over 2,000 people in Bhopal, India where the plant was located. Photograph: Bettmann/guardian.co.uk

Bhopal Gas victims hold wanted poster of former Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson during a protest outside a court in the central Indian city of Bhopal September 3, 2004. The victims demanded that former Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson be put on trial in India. More than 3,000 people were killed and tens of thousands injured when a tank at the Union Carbide of India Ltd (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal leaked five tonnes of poisonous methyl isocyanate gas on 1984. Photograph: Raj Patidar/guardian.co.uk

Survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy holds an effigy of former chairman of Union Carbide Waren Anderson during a demonstration in Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh on 31 July 2009. A court ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to arrest former Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson and produce him without delay. Photograph: Sanjeev Gupta/guardian.co.uk

03 Mar 1985, Bhopal, India --- A crowd of women and children, poisoned by the Bhopal pesticide leak, line up for medication at a government clinic. Photograph: Paul Wedel/guardian.co.uk

In this Friday, Aug. 7, 2009 photograph, Hira Lal, who has lost the ability to move and hear, lays on a makeshift bed outside his shanty in Bhopal, India. The Bhopal industrial disaster killed about 4,000 people on the night of Dec. 3, 1984. The death toll over the next few years rose to 15,000, according to government estimates. A quarter century later, many of those who were exposed to the gas have given birth to physically and mentally disabled children. Photograph: Saurabh Das/guardian.co.uk

18 Nov 2004 A discarded empty packet of "Sevin" insecticide is shown at the Union Carbide Plant in Bhopal. Decaying sacks of toxic insecticide remain in open storage sheds at the Union Carbide Plant in Bhopal twenty years after the gas tragedy of 1984. Sevin was the principal product of the Union Carbide plant. Photograph: Tom Pietrasik/guardian.co.uk

Local women walk in front of a contaminated waterpond on January 23, 2007, in the settlement located next to the former Dow / Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India. On the night of December 3, 1984, a leak in a chemical factory in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India caused a deadly gas-cloud which killed 8000 people on the spot and more than 20,000 by now due to health consequences. It's the biggest industrial disaster worldwide to date. Photograph: Andy Spyra/guardian.co.uk

In this Sunday Nov. 22, 2009 photograph, parts of the Union Carbide factory tower are seen over nearby shanty towns in Bhopal, India. The Bhopal industrial disaster killed about 4,000 people on the night of Dec. 3, 1984. The death toll over the next few years rose to 15,000, according to government estimates. A quarter century later, many of those who were exposed to the gas have given birth to physically and mentally disabled children. Photograph: Saurabh Das/guardian.co.uk

In this Monday, Nov. 23, 2009 photograph, women stand in a queue outside the Union Carbide factory to raise demands for compensation in Bhopal, India. The Bhopal industrial disaster killed about 4,000 people on the night of Dec. 3, 1984. The death toll over the next few years rose to 15,000, according to government estimates. A quarter century later, many of those who were exposed to the gas have given birth to physically and mentally disabled children. Photograph: Saurabh Das/guardian.co.uk

Specimens of aborted and deceased foetuses and infants are displayed as they are seen preserved in embalming fluid at a hospital on November 27, 2009 in Bhopal, India. Twenty-five years after an explosion causing a mass gas leak, in the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, killed at least eight thousand people, toxic material from the biggest industrial disaster in history continues to affect Bhopalis. A new generation is growing up sick, disabled and struggling for justice. The effects of the disaster on the health of generations to come, both through genetics, transferred from gas victims to their children and through the ongoing severe contamination, caused by the Union Carbide factory, has only started to develop visible forms recently. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/guardian.co.uk

Eight-year-old Shemon Gonsalves, who was born with physical disabilities, lies on the ground in his parent's home in a slum area next to the Union Carbide Corp pesticide plant in Bhopal November 30, 2009. In December 1984, a toxic gas leak developed at the plant resulting in the deaths of thousands of people. Local activists claim that many people who were exposed to the gas or by the use of contaminated water from near the factory have given birth to physically and mentally disabled children. Photograph: Reinhard Krause/guardian.co.uk

Children play in front of the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal on November 18, 2009. More than 3,700 people died in the world's worst industrial disaster in on December 2 - 3, 1984 when gas leaked from a pesticides plant owned by the US multinational Union Carbide factory in Bhopal. Photograph: Raveendran/guardian.co.uk