Judge Confiscates Assets of Union Carbide in India : Bhopal: The company’s attempt to sell its share of the pesticide factory involved in deadly gas leak prompts the government to request the seizure.

An Indian court Thursday ordered the confiscation of all Union Carbide Corp.’s assets in the country, seven years after the chemical company’s pesticide factory spewed deadly gas over Bhopal in the world’s worst industrial disaster.

Bhopal District Court Magistrate Gulab Sharma ordered the seizure of Union Carbide’s 50.9% share in its subsidiary, Union Carbide India Ltd.

Sharma, hearing a criminal suit brought by the Indian government against Danbury, Conn.-based Union Carbide, said he took the action at the request of the Central Bureau of Investigation, which is prosecuting the case.

The bureau asked the court to seize the U.S. company’s Indian assets, including the now-closed pesticides factory in Bhopal, to prevent it from selling the property.

Union Carbide announced recently that it wanted to sell its properties in India to raise $17 million to help build a hospital for Bhopal victims.

The Dec. 3, 1984, accident has killed at least 4,037 people so far. Doctors say an average of one person a day is still dying from the aftereffects of the methyl isocyanate gas.

Tens of thousands of others have been disabled.

Lawyer Rajendra Singh, opposing the court order on behalf of Union Carbide India, said the U.S. company had pledged its share holding in the subsidiary to the Bhopal Hospital Trust, established March 20 and headed by a former solicitor-general of England.

Singh said Union Carbide’s shares in the subsidiary were held abroad but could not be sold without prior approval of the Indian central bank.

He said the proposed hospital would be delayed if the assets were seized.