Bhopal, June 18 (IANS) Maintaining the heat on the Congress over the release of Warren Anderson, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sushma Swaraj said Friday that former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was responsible for allowing the then Union Carbide chief to leave India after the Bhopal gas tragedy.

"The district collector and the superintendent of police of Bhopal escorted the main accused to the airport in an official car after securing bail and he was allowed safe passage from India and it could not have been possible without the involvement of the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and the chief minister Arjun Singh," the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said while addressing a sit-in here.

The sit-in was organised by the Madhya Pradesh's ruling BJP to press its demand for "real justice for the 1984 gas tragedy victims".

Swaraj remarked that Anderson's escape was "just like when (Bofors scandal accused) Ottavio Quattrocchi was allowed to leave the country".

She also questioned the "silence" of Arjun Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi over the Anderson episode and criticised the "insufficient" June 7 verdict in the case.

The Bhopal gas leak, the world's worst industrial tragedy, occurred here on the night of Dec 2-3, 1984 and killed and maimed thousands.

A Bhopal trial court June 7 declared Anderson a proclaimed offender while sentencing seven former Union Carbide India officials to two years imprisonment. However, they were immediately given bail.