Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, is home to 1.8 million people. On the night of December 2, 1984, a poisonous gas leak spread across the sleeping city – methyl isocyanate, released from Union Carbide’s pesticide factory, filled the air, suffocating thousands in just a few hours. Hundreds of thousands more were left to endure lifelong health health implication: chronic respiratory disease, organ failure, and lasting disability.

Thirty-five years later, the city has transformed. It is one of India’s fastest-growing metropolises, and “India’s cleanest capital" as it was written on billboards all around the city centre. The population has surged, new districts have rise.

Bhopal remains a city haunted: for some, the fight for justice is still unfinished, while in the new districts of “New Bhopal” life has risen as if the past had never happened. The old factory site and its vast evaporation ponds remain uninhabitable – toxic wasteland already encircled by the city’s expanding edges.

The following photographs show both the old and new faces of Bhopal, captured in 2019.

Special thanks to Sambhavna Trust & Prof. Werner Lorke.