Reply #31: no, actually, under US law, he isn't

[northzax]

that's the point.

He has been charged with a crime, not convicted. And what's more so, he has not been charged with a crime that, under the treaty signed between the sovereign states of India and the United States, allows for extradition. Every extradition treaty ever signed that is worth the paper it's printed on requires the claimant state to prove that there is probable cause that a crime has been committed under receiving state law.

he may be an asshole, he's certainly civily liable (and Union Carbide has been held liable, by the Supreme Court of India, for this horrendous incident. and litigation is at least being pursued in the US courts, I believe) but the very prosecutor charging him with a crime chose to charge him with a crime that does not have a direct correlation under US law. The corrolary you cite is a first degree murder, something illegal in both the United States and India. The US, like many countries, is involved in multiple extradition battles, as both the claimant and host state, at any given time. Most are simple. some are complicated (for instance, many countries won't extradite to the US unless the Death Penalty is off the table)

If, in fact, a serious violation of Indian law occured, then the onus is on India to file an extradition request that meets the terms laid out by the laws of both nations. That's how it works. Surely somewhere in the government of India there are some decent attorneys who can look up the right statute? if not, then the US should never extradite a citizen to a country that cannot come up with a decent legal reason for it, how can we guarantee a fair trial if the entire government of India can't fill out a form correctly?

so maybe the problem is on the India end, if the Government doesn't want this, why is it the responsibility of the US government to enforce their laws for them?

the whole point of a codified legal code is that there are regulations and policies that apply to everyone, even the scumbags of the world.