On 13 February 1996 — six months before *Vellore* — a Division Bench of the Supreme Court led by Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy applied the absolute-liability doctrine of *Oleum Gas Leak* to five chemical units at Bichhri village in Rajasthan and operationalised the polluter-pays principle as a remediation-cost obligation. The judgment is doctrinally the antecedent to *Vellore* on polluter-pays, the first explicit reception of customary international environmental law into Indian law, and — in its 2011 execution arc — confirmed recovery of ₹37.385 crore plus interest from the polluters.