Vizag gas leak news, Vizag gas leak fir: The FIR into the poisonous Visakhapatnam gas leak incident that killed 11 people registered by the local police neither mentions the styrene gas identified as the reason for the deaths nor names any employee of LG Polymers, the plant where the leak occured. The FIR filed at the Gopalapatnam police station, accessed by The Indian Express, says “some smoke came out” of the factory and that there was a “bad smell” that endangered life.

The gas leak on May 7 occurred at the LG Polymers chemical plant in RR Venkatapuram village near Gopalapatnam on the outskirts of Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. The poisonous gas spread over a radius of about 3 km and killed 11 people and more than 1,000 people fell sick after being exposed to Styrene gas.

The Indian Express report says that the FIR does not mention Styrene and also does not name anyone from LG Polymers, the company at whose plant the leak occured. Notably, police officials had confirmed the presence of Styrene gas on the day of tragedy. Also, the police document claims that five people died while the 10 civilians were declared dead by the time the FIR was filed.

The FIR was filed at 7 am on May 7, almost five hours after the tragedy. The FIR was registered under Sections 278, 284, 285, 337, 338, 304-II of IPC, the IE report said.

“At about 0330 hrs some smoke came out from the LG Polymers Company, due to the reason the neighbouring villages (were) affected and getting bad smell and the smell is endanger to human life. Due to fear, all villagers ran…from the houses. In the incident, 5 persons died and the remaining people were admitted in hospitals as in-patients,” it reads.

The gas leak was reported when workers were preparing to reopen the plant after a gap of nearly six weeks due to coronavirus-induced nationwide lockdown. It came as a chilling reminder of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy which remains one of the worst industrial disasters in the world till date. More than 5,000 people were killed and thousands were affected.

When Visakhapatnam Police Commissioner Rajiv Kumar Meena was asked no one was named in the FIR, he said, “Even if the FIR does not name anyone, the investigation will find out the role of each person responsible in running the factory.” He said that the high-powered committee and the experts committee are also examining the roles of the senior managers.

According to Joint Chief Inspector of Factories, Visakhapatnam, J Siva Shankar Reddy, it was General Manager and Director of Operations, LG Polymers, PP Chandra Mohan Rao’s responsibility to ensure the safe opening of the plant and resumption of the worker. But he was not present in the factory when it was decided to restart operations. Reddy added that none of the senior managers was present and there were 24 people in the factory at that time.

“Half of them (present in the factory at the time of reopening) were workers on contract. There were a few engineers under whose supervision they were working. They did not have the experience to handle the situation,” he told the daily.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s LG Chem said that it had sent a delegation to investigate the cause of the gas leak. The company said the delegation comprises eight members and led by its petrochemicals business head. The delegation will brief support measures to affected people and later meet government officials.

The company has not announced compensation to the deceased and affected families yet. The state government is providing Rs 1 crore relief to the families of the deceased.