Hundreds of people marched through the central Indian city of Bhopal Tuesday, waving flaming torches to commemorate the thousands who perished in the world’s deadliest industrial disaster 30 years ago.

In the early hours of December 3, 1984, around 40 metric tons of cyanide gas accidentally leaked from a pesticide factory owned by U.S. multinational Union Carbide Corp.

The toxic gas was carried by the wind into the surrounding slums.

The government recorded 5,295 deaths. Activists estimate 25,000 people have died from illnesses in the years since.

Many at the rally called for the clean-up of thousands of tons of toxic waste, buried by the company inside and outside the former plant.

Activists say the toxic waste has seeped into the ground and poisoned the drinking water of 50,000 people living around the site.

The company, now owned by U.S. based multinational Dow Chemical Company, says it settled with the Indian government for half a billion dollars and has no more responsibility.

Human rights groups say the company has not done enough. The Secretary General of Amnesty International Salil Shetty called the settlement inadequate, and said it provides an average of less than a thousand dollars per person to those affected by the tragedy.

“This was a woefully inadequate amount which, I think, exposes a shocking level of indifference and contempt towards the victims in India,” Shetty said.
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