A former director of aviation at Bhopal and a pilot have both claimed that the Madhya Pradesh chief minister's office had instructed them to fly former Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson to Delhi after the Bhopal gas tragedy.
“We got a call from the chief minister's office and were asked to arrange a flight,” former director of aviation, Bhopal, R.S. Sodhi told television channel NDTV. Senior congress leader Arjun Singh was then Madhya Pradesh chief minister.
Sodhi remembered that two cars stopped in front of the aircraft parked at Bhopal airport. “The first car was carrying the superintendent of police and the second one had Warren Anderson and Moti Singh (then district collector),” he said.
“Anderson boarded the plane and we took off," Sodhi said.
A video broadcast by CNN-IBN Thursday and filmed by a French television team Dec 7, 1984 shows a blue Ambassador car with a red beacon going through the airport gates and running on the tarmac. The car, said the channel, belonged to the then district collector and also had Anderson inside.
The pilot who flew the plane has also come forward to talk about the events of that December afternoon. “We waited for Anderson and he came with the superintendent of police and the collector. He got down from the car and we asked him to get in the aircraft