LONDON: In a cruel sequence of events on the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, the victims, their families and poor poisoned Bhopal were all too briefly, and courtesy of a BBC goof-up, awarded a 12-billion-dollar hand-up from Dow Chemical Company, the world’s largest chemical producer and current owner of Union Carbide.

In a spoof reminiscent of an April Fool joke, the BBC allowed its platform to be used by a man described as Dow spokesman Jude Finisterra.

Finistera grandiosely - and untruely as it now emerges - announced near Mad Max plans to "liquidate Union Carbide remediate the Bhopal plant site."

Finisterra, who was swiftly disowned by Dow’s real spokeswoman in Zurich Maria Ashanin, also announced that Dow accepted "full responsibility for the Bhopal catastrophe."

But within minutes, experts were deeply suspicious of that claimed reversal of Dow’s position on Bhopal.

An alert Dow set out to disabuse the world of the notion it had suddenly acquired a heart.

By Friday afternoon, Ashanin was clarifying on the phone to the Times of India that Dow had been deeply "puzzled" by the BBC interview and its interviewee.

"We have absolutely no idea," she said, when asked how it was that the BBC appeared to have fallen for a hoax that tried to bounce Dow into a position it did not want.

Ashanin stressed that there was no change in Dow’s position on Bhopal.

Dow, which bought Union Carbide three years ago, has always maintained it "has no responsibility" for the Bhopal tragedy.

Even on the tragedy’s sensitive 20th anniversary, and with a public vigil vilifying Dow and Union Carbide underway on the faraway streets of Bhopal, the company continued to remind the world it "never owned or operated the Bhopal plant".

And it refused to bend even slightly to demands by many, including most recently, Amnesty International, that it show a little compassion for the victims of the world’s worst industrial accident.

It had "philanthropic initiatives in India," it said, but these were just the same as "elsewhere around the world in communities where we live and work."

"These initiatives are not specific to Bhopal as we do not own or operate a facility there," it added.

But the company said even though it was not responsible for the disaster, it still remembered that "day (December 3, 1984) well and the following days, when several thousand people died."

It said the only good to come out of Bhopal was that "the chemical industry learned and grew - creating Responsible Care (a code of conduct and practice for chemical producers) with its strengthened focus on process safety standards, emergency preparedness, and community awareness."