Victims find their cases at law deteriorating because they can find no one to make determinations of their original condition and describe its progress or decline. Their cures also lapse, because, as secrecy increases, treatment and issues of therapy become undiscussable. S. Khandekar, writing in India Today , reported that the Secretary of the State Legal Aid Board was handling with alacrity the rush of people to fill out forms for the State to pursue their legal cases, but had little or no regard for the need for medical documentation in these cases. The public is not given a steady flow of information to maintain its equilibrium. It is unable to learn the lessons of Bhopal and to demand that they be applied domestically and throughout the world.
Science suffers, too.
A petition by a Bhopal citizen, presented by his lawyer before the High Court of Jabalpur, asked that the State Government be directed to preserve, in its operation to detoxify MIC, a sample of the contents of the tanks and to not tamper with the equipment employed at the plant. The Judge did so direct that 15 kilograms be kept in 3 containers and enter the custody of the court at Bhopal. The Judge reduced the amount to 1.5 kilograms. Still the Company and State argued that it was not safe. An appeals court of two justices upheld this amount and directed that the sample he analyzed by the chief government scientist on the project and a scientist of the petitioner's choice.