The Netflix drama series The Railway Men is a four-episode limited series about workers on the Indian trains in 1984 who are brave and go through hard times. The show is mostly about a terrible accident that happens—a horrible and sad gas leak in Bhopal—and what happens afterward. The movie based on the true story was written by Aavush Gupta and directed by Shiv Rawail.
The Railway Men is based on real events. The story is based on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, which happened on December 2nd and 3rd, 1984. It is thought to be the worst industrial accident in the history of the world.
The trouble started at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) plant for making pesticides. The plant was built in 1969 to make the pesticide Sevin. But a dangerous gas called methyl isocyanate (MIC) leaked from a storage tank and horribly spread, poisoning thousands of people who lived nearby.
The accident seemed to have been caused by water in the MIC holding tank. Because there was no real plan in place for such a huge disaster, this set off a chemical chain reaction that let a lot of the toxic gas leak out. The gas quickly spread to the densely populated neighborhoods around the plant, causing panic and chaos among the many people who lived there.
Thousands of people died because of the terrible effects of the event, and those who didn’t die right away were sick from the fumes. Due to the harmful gas’s long-lasting affects, many more people would get sick and some would even die in the following week. Outrage and judicial consequences followed, and those who were hurt would demand some kind of justice.
The US-based Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) worked out a deal with the Indian government that paid them 470 million dollars. It wasn’t until 1989 that a settlement was made, and many reports said that the money given to cover the terrible number of deaths and the environmental problems that continued after the event wasn’t enough.
The Netflix show shows how brave some of the workers were who helped save the lives of people who were involved in the disaster.
In 1984, the Bhopal accident happened. At the time, Warren Martin Anderson was the CEO of the Union Carbide Corporation. This man of business was born in New York in 1921.
The case was being looked into by Indian officials, who charged Anderon with manslaughter. He was arrested when he got to India. He was eventually sent back to the U.S., but the Indian police thought of him as a wanted criminal because he had not shown up to court in 1992. He was wanted by the Indian government to be sent back to India in 2003, but the U.S. refused. In 2009, an arrest warrant was issued for him.
A company representative said that Union Carbide was not running the plant at the time of the accident and that duty was given to Union Carbide India Limited. At the end of 2010, eight former high-level company employees were found guilty. The US company said in a statement that everyone involved in the event had been charged.
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