India's Supreme Court has rejected a request to re-open the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster case in order to impose harsher sentences on the accused. Prosecutors made the appeal following last June's verdict handing down brief jail sentences to seven former managers at the Union Carbide plant. The accused were prosecuted for negligence in relation to the disaster…Survivors...are extremely disappointed with the court's ruling…[T]he Supreme Court said that the "petition is based on a plea that is wrong and fallacious" [and] that "no satisfactory explanation" had been given for filing the petition…Union Carbide officials had initially been charged with "culpable homicide", but a 1996 court ruling diluted the charges…