On Dec. 3, 1984, a gas leak at the Union Carbide chemicals plant in the industrial city of Bhopal killed more than 3,000 people, most of them living in a nearby shanty town. It remains the world’s worst industrial accident. For the survivors, the ordeal was just beginning. Another reported 20,000 have since died from various cancers, lung and heart disease and other ailments related to chemical exposure. It took 23 years, but the Indian government finally confirmed 558,125 Bhopal residents suffered illnesses of varying levels and permanence. Compensation of $3.3 billion for Bhopal’s dead and sick was requested; seven years later Union Carbide paid $470 million – about $500 per person - and $17 million for a new hospital for gas victims. A subsequent lawsuit in 2010 asking for another $1.1 billion was rejected by India’s Supreme Court last month – 13 years later. “The question of compensation can't be raked up three decades after the [initial] settlement,” the court said in its ruling. I interviewed the family pictured here in 1991. At the time, Shivnarayan and Lela Rathore lived with their three-year-old daughter Laxaman in a government apartment complex for gas victims. They already had lost three other children and Laxaman, held by her father, was not well. Almost 40 years later, those exposed to the gas leak - as well as their children and grandchildren - suffer from an astounding number of medical issues. Omwati Yadav, who lives near the shuttered plant, told The Guardian newspaper of London in 2019: “It would be better if there was another gas leak which could kill us all and put us all out of this misery.”