CHENNAI/SEOUL • Indian police yesterday filed a culpable homicide complaint against a subsidiary of South Korea's LG Chem over a toxic gas leak at its chemical plant in the south of the country that killed 11 people and forced 800 into hospital for treatment from poisoning.
A day after the leak, the local authorities doubled the evacuation area around the factory in Andhra Pradesh to a 5km radius, waking residents in the middle of the night and herding them into buses in case more poison should escape.
Police took to the streets with loudhailers to tell residents to leave their homes and board the buses, according to Mr Sheikh Salim, a 21-year-old fruit seller who lives about 2.5km from the plant in the city of Visakhapatnam.
A copy of the police complaint filed against the management of LG Chem's subsidiary LG Polymers cited several counts of negligence and culpable homicide. The report, which precedes a full police investigation and potential charges, refers to negligent handling of poisonous substances at the plant and causing hurt and endangering public life.
An LG Chem spokesman in Seoul declined to comment on the report.
The National Green Tribunal, India's environmental court, yesterday formed a five-member committee to investigate the leak. The authorities said the leak came from styrene, a flammable liquid that is used to make industrial products, including polystyrene, fibreglass, rubber and latex. The South Korean plant makes polystyrene products used in manufacturing electric fan blades, cups and cutlery and containers for cosmetic products.
Residents described being awakened before dawn on Thursday by a cloud of noxious smelling vapour, struggling for breath and suffering pain and itchy eyes.
Unconscious victims and the bodies of dead cows lay in the streets.
Though on a smaller scale, the incident revived memories of a deadly leak from a factory of US chemical firm Union Carbide in 1984 that killed thousands of people in the central Indian city of Bhopal. That incident caused a national trauma and made Indians bitterly sensitive to lax safety standards at foreign-owned factories.
LG Chem, South Korea's biggest petrochemical firm, said yesterday that it had asked police to expand the evacuation zone as a "precautionary measure", because temperatures in storage tanks might rise.
"We are taking necessary measures, including putting water into the tank," the company said in a statement.
Mr N Surendra Anand, a fire officer in Visakhapatnam district, told Reuters that the expanded evacuation was triggered because more gas had escaped from the plant. "The situation is tense," he said.
Ms Srijana Gummalla, commissioner of the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation, said gas emissions had been fluctuating and had largely subsided.
The factory was in the process of reopening after a weeks-long shutdown imposed by the Indian authorities to curb the spread of the coronavirus, local officials and the company said.
The leak has led to fears of a backlash against Korean businesses in India, where Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor and others have a large presence.
REUTERS
