It is always the hands that tell what happened here. I quickly learn to observe the speaker’s hands. Hands of the sick, of the survivors, of the victims’ parents. The hands of a girl unable to move her right ring and pinky fingers because of the effects of contamination. The lifegiving hands of Champa Devi Shukla. As the mouth speaks, the hands narrate, add emphasis, take you back to the origin of the story.

The story is that of the world’s deadliest chemical and industrial disaster: the tragedy of Bhopal, in the state of Madhya Pradesh in central India.

The daughter of a survivor shows her hands, two fingers of which she cannot move. All photographs by Cristiano Denanni. Used by permission.

In the late 1960s, millions of Indian farmers were in search of an effective yet affordable pesticide. The apparent solution came from the United States. A multinational company called Union Carbide smelled an opportunity, knowing a market as vast as India’s could be a gold mine.

Union Carbide had been successfully testing a product that appeared to offer the desired combination of effectiveness and affordability: Sevin, its brand name for the insecticide carbaryl. Union Carbide quickly realized that, given the country’s size and sales potential, it would be more logistically and economically sensible to produce Sevin in India rather than exporting it from the United States. Bhopal was selected as the site and a factory was begun in 1969.

Women on a balcony outside the wall of the abandoned Union Carbide factory. Many of Bhopal’s poorest residents continue to live within the contaminated zone.

Sevin is produced from methyl isocyanate (MIC), a clear, colorless, and highly toxic liquid with a pungent, cabbage-like odor. It is also highly flammable, reactive, and water-soluble. MIC must be handled with the utmost caution and cannot be safely stored without further processing. Even the slightest change in temperature or contact with water can trigger a chemical reaction, causing potentially fatal harm to people and animals.

Even before construction of the factory started, mistakes were made. First, the plant was situated so that in the event of a gas leak, prevailing winds would carry the toxins to a densely populated area – home to Bhopal’s poorest residents and many of the plant’s workers. That was just the beginning of a series of missteps that steadily compromised the safety of the plant and the entire city; the negligence continued with the deliberate decision to cut costs by skipping essential maintenance.

Children play near a contaminated lake.

The first victim of the plant was Ashraf Khan. As the head of a team working in the department where phosgene – a Sevin component – was produced, Ashraf was tasked with a routine maintenance job on December 23, 1981, asked to replace a faulty flange between two sections of pipe.

Ashraf made two mistakes. The first was failing to wear the heavy rubber gown the regulations required for safety. He was just doing a small, easy job, after all. As he reassembled the new part, he noticed a small splash of liquid phosgene on his sweatshirt. Realizing the danger, he rushed to the shower – making his second, and fatal, mistake. Impatient, he removed the gas mask he was wearing before the water jet had completed the decontamination process. The heat from his chest vaporized the phosgene droplets, sending them toward his nostrils. But aside from a slight irritation in his eyes and throat, Ashraf initially experienced no further discomfort.

The first symptom of phosgene poisoning is often a sense of euphoria. That afternoon, Ashraf told his wife, Sajida Bano, and their sons, Arshad and Shouyer, that he wanted to visit the countryside to check out a house they were considering buying. It may have seemed odd to her, but she didn’t object. As soon as he stepped outside, he suffered a severe respiratory attack, collapsed, and began vomiting blood. The ambulance rushed him to Hamidia Hospital, a facility funded by Union Carbide, where he was admitted to intensive care. His agony lasted two days. The first victim of a plant “as harmless as a chocolate factory,” as an American company executive had described it, died on December 25.

A survivor participates in a march on the fortieth anniversary of the tragedy, December 3, 2024.

By 1984, the plant was operating at one quarter of its capacity as widespread crop failures decreased demand for pesticides. As it was no longer profitable, Union Carbide was trying to sell the plant but had not found a buyer.

As Union Carbide well knew, MIC should not be stored without being processed. This should have been part of any safety protocol. Yet on the night of December 2, 1984, forty tons of MIC were left stored in two tanks. Routine work on some nearby water pipes led to a leak. Since the tanks were improperly sealed due to neglected maintenance, the water made contact with the MIC. Just after midnight, the buildup of toxic gas made one of the tanks burst its safety valve. Within seconds, a poisonous cloud spread across Bhopal. That night alone, at least 2,259 people died, and in the days and weeks that followed an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 more people died, with over 500,000 people seriously sickened.

Many of them continue to suffer today.

Children in the slums beside the railroad tracks, the poorest area of Bhopal.

As death claimed thousands of lives in the neighborhoods closest to the plant, the deadly cloud spread to Bhopal’s railway station a mile away. Eyewitnesses recall harrowing scenes: people in agonizing pain, their eyes bulging from their sockets, contorted by spasms and vomiting; corpses stacked on top of each other; a newborn suckling from the lifeless body of its mother.

In just a few minutes, the Gorakhpur Express would arrive, packed with people traveling to the Ijtema, an annual Muslim prayer-gathering taking place in the city. The stationmaster tried to stop the train before it reached the station, where the situation was already beginning to resemble an apocalypse. With three colleagues, he walked out along the tracks, waving flashlights to warn the approaching train. The engineer did not see them, and their only remaining option was to warn the conductor – either to prevent the train from stopping or, at the very least, to make it leave immediately, minimizing the number of people exposed to the toxic cloud. These efforts saved hundreds of lives, but many were lost: despite the warning, some passengers, eager to attend the Ijtema, disembarked before the train resumed its journey.

In one of those forty-four train cars was Sajida Bano, who had left Bhopal after her husband’s death and was returning to settle some family matters. Upon arriving at the station, she quickly realized the gravity of the situation. She left her two children for a few minutes to call an ambulance. When she returned, unsuccessful, she saw that while the younger child, Shouyer, still clutched a soft toy in his weak hands, her older son, Arshad, had blood clumps forming a red ring around his mouth. He was no longer breathing. Within three years, Union Carbide had taken both her husband and her son.

Children living near a contaminated landfill and lake on the outskirts of Bhopal.

None of Union Carbide’s US executives ever faced trial, though in 2010 some executives of its Indian subsidiary were convicted of negligence. In 1989, an agreement between the US and Indian governments resulted in meager compensation: approximately $500 per person affected. When it was pointed out that the compensation was grossly disproportionate to the severity of the Bhopal disaster, a spokesman for Dow Chemical, which had since acquired Union Carbide, responded: “$500 is plenty good for an Indian.”

In a 2024 report titled “Bhopal: 40 Years of Injustice,” Amnesty International alleges that Dow Chemical, in collaboration with both US and Indian authorities, has created a “sacrifice zone” in the area, where over half a million people, across generations, continue to suffer. “Sacrifice zones” are areas marked by catastrophic and lasting health damage to marginalized communities, resulting from pollution caused by corporate activities. Neither Union Carbide nor Dow Chemical has ever committed to assessing the extent of the contamination or properly decontaminating the water and land surrounding the factory, where thousands of people continue to live. In short, Dow Chemical continued to follow the same path as Union Carbide, denying responsibility toward the victims and the environment.

Mohammad Shafique, a survivor, weeps while telling his story.

Mohammad Shafique, a survivor, recounts the hardships of the years that followed the disaster. He keeps a plastic box of medications beside him on the floor. Next to it, there’s a glass and a tablet waiting to be taken. His hands flip through a newspaper from a few years ago, pointing to photographs from the Bhopal disaster report. Then the story overwhelms him, and his hands press against his eyes – tight, rigid, a mask that separates him from a world that has brutally scarred him. Perhaps, every now and then, he feels the need to distance himself, keeping a part of himself away from his own life.

A child living on the outskirts of Bhopal.

When I speak with Chote Khan, another survivor, the entire family gathers around us. The room is full and more people peer in through the door.

Khan’s home, like others I’ve visited, lies just beyond the railway track that runs along the factory’s perimeter wall, about a hundred yards from a contaminated lake and a landfill. It is an area immersed in toxins left behind by those responsible for the apocalypse, with no effort made to clean up the devastation. Incredibly, despite everything, it is welcoming and vibrant. Sunlight filters through the doors, settling gently on the carpets, and every object seems to belong. It’s easy to feel at home in this house.

Looking Bhopal’s survivors in the eye reveals the weight of their history and their unwavering determination for justice, but also their humanity – genuine smiles, a desire to share, to rise above, sometimes timidly, other times with unyielding persistence.

At one point, Khan calls over one of his daughters, who is preparing chai for everyone. He asks her to show me the last two fingers of her right hand, bent and clenched. She can’t move them. It’s one of the consequences of the contamination, he says, though it’s not clear if he means directly or that she was born this way as a result. I don’t probe. After the interview, in the hallway, the daughter, a woman of striking beauty, lets me photograph her hands. As she crosses them for the photograph, they begin to tremble.

It’s a human reaction, endearing. What lies behind it I can’t fully understand. It’s as if she’s silently saying, “This is my life, my pain. Who are you, and what will you do with it?” The body speaks a language deeper than words can convey. The hands do not lie.

A child with disabilities likely due to parental contamination receives free care at the Chingari Trust Clinic.

Champa Devi Shukla is the cofounder of the Chingari Trust Clinic in Bhopal, a children’s rehabilitation center where professionals from various fields collaborate to support children with psychological and physical challenges or disabilities caused by the methyl isocyanate contamination in the city’s soil and water.

I talk with Shukla as we walk through the clinic’s corridors and gardens, meeting some of the children she cares for. She’s calm as she speaks, a sweet, delicate, wise woman. Her work, she tells me, is a form of resistance and struggle.

There are many ways to resist, after all. Sometimes simply by persisting, like all the people I’ve met here. Because you can’t resist unless you exist. You resist by carrying on despite sickness and deformities, standing against giants without dignity with nothing but your own.