Amnesty's report, "Clouds of Injustice," estimates that 7,000 to 10,000 people died in the first three days of the Bhopal disaster, and that 15,000 more have died in the years since. An additional 100,000 continue to suffer chronic, largely untreatable diseases of the lungs, eyes and blood. Meanwhile, a new generation in Bhopal endures an epidemic of infertility and grotesque birth defects, including missing palates and fingers growing out of shoulders, in part because of continuing contamination of the groundwater.

Bhopal thus ranks as the single deadliest industrial disaster of the modern environmental era. With a death toll of approximately 22,000, it has killed more people than the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine, did. And its victims are still dying today, 20 years later.

Each Dec. 3, on the anniversary of the disaster, Bee and Shukla join other marchers who parade with an effigy of Anderson through the streets of Bhopal and then burn it. Bee and Shukla continue to hold Anderson, now 83 and retired, personally responsible for the Bhopal disaster, which they insist on labeling "a crime" rather than an "accident." "It was Anderson's criminal negligence and insistence on cost-cutting that led to the disaster," Shukla said.

Internal Union Carbide documents, released in the 1990s during the discovery phase of a civil lawsuit against the company, seem to support Shukla's contention. A 1973 document, signed by Anderson, notes that the technology that would be used in the Bhopal factory was "unproven." A safety review conducted by Union Carbide experts in 1982 warned of a "serious potential for sizable releases of toxic materials" at the factory.

John Musser, a company spokesman, confirmed the existence of the 1982 study but asserted, "None of the issues [it] raised would have had an impact on the fatal gas leak, and all of the issues had been addressed by the plant well before the December 1984 disaster." The real culprit, the company insists, was sabotage.

Anderson now appears to be living the life of a wealthy recluse, with luxury homes in Bridgehampton, N.Y., Manhattan and Vero Beach, Fla. Company officials declined to provide contact information for him for the purposes of this article. But when Bee and Shukla toured the United States last spring after winning the Goldman Prize, they considered trying to find Anderson and confront him face to face.

"We don't want him hanged or anything," Shukla said. "But he has to understand what it means to be cut off from one's family, what it is to suffer alone."

"If we see him," Bee added, "we will ask: If you are innocent, why are you hiding and not answering questions about what happened in Bhopal?"

Both Bee and Shukla lost loved ones in the disaster. Seven members of Bee's extended family died during or as a result of the disaster, and her husband was left too ill to continue his work as a tailor. Shukla lost her husband and two sons. A daughter later suffered three miscarriages, a grandson died, and a granddaughter was born with a cleft lip and a missing palate.

"The gas disaster was sudden, one night, but the last 20 years have also been miserable," Shukla said. "People still have pain and breathlessness, and now we are seeing cancers too. There is mental and physical retardation among children. Many women are sterile or never begin menstruating, so men don't want to marry them." A 2002 study commissioned by Greenpeace International but conducted by independent scientists concluded that Bhopal's groundwater contains heavy metals and levels of mercury millions of times higher than recommended. (Company spokesman Musser disputes those conclusions, citing studies in the late 1990s by government agencies in India.)

One bright spot has been the founding of the Sambhavna Trust Clinic to treat survivors of the disaster. Founded in the belief that compassion can create hope from despair, its name translates from Hindi as the Compassion Trust Clinic. Since opening its doors half a kilometer from the blast site in 1996, the clinic has treated thousands of Bhopal victims by combining the best of both Eastern and Western healthcare.

The staff biochemist, for example, doubles as a yoga teacher. Yoga is central to the clinic's approach, as is ayurvedic medicine. Patients pay nothing for treatment, even though they get far more care than at the crowded public hospitals that India's poor usually visit. First-time patients at Sambhavna have broken down in tears, the clinic's Web site reports, because "in 15 years no doctor had ever listened to their chests or taken their pulse during examination."

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