Written by ITV News Correspondent Sam Holder and International Affairs Content Editor Jessica Omari
Thousands of people in a town in India have developed cancer and serious lung diseases as a result of toxic waste being dumped by a British company, an ITV News investigation has found.
More than a million tonnes of soil in Kymore, a small town in Madhya Pradesh, have been contaminated with asbestos.
The estimated clean-up cost is around £100 million, and currently there are no plans to remove the waste because the company no longer exists.
Victims include father-of-three Somesh, who’s in his forties and has been diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic lung cancer. He was exposed to large quantities of asbestos dust decades ago in his school’s playground.
“We can’t go anywhere from Kymore. We have to survive where our family lives. If we get symptoms, then it’s bad luck”, he says.
Somesh’s doctor has given him just six months left to live after being exposed to asbestos at a young age
Somesh’s doctor has given him just six months left to live, leaving his family at risk of severe poverty.
Kymore was chosen by the British company Turner and Newall as the location for the first asbestos factory in India in the 1930s.
Despite the company knowing about the dangers, they offered workers virtually no protection and left huge quantities of asbestos throughout the town.
The town’s playground is built on top of a former asbestos dump, covered with only a thin layer of soil, which experts believe does not come close to making the site safe.
Another dump on the edge of town is completely uncovered, and there are large piles of broken asbestos pieces littered throughout areas where people live and animals graze.
Dr Muralidhar Venkiteswaran, who works in Kymore, said “all these people will die suffering”
Professor of General Surgery Muralidhar Venkiteswaran travels from Chennai, nearly a thousand miles away, to help diagnose those suffering from symptoms.
He comes to Kymore every two years, and when he last visited, in September 2025, he diagnosed 1,200 new cases of people with asbestos-related diseases.
“All these people will die suffering, not just dying, they will suffer a lot of respiratory distress, [and will spend] a lot of money on lung cancer expenses”, he says.
When asbestos breaks apart, it releases microscopic fibres which can settle in the lung. These fibres are carcinogenic, causing cancers like mesothelioma, which is invariably fatal.
Breathing in the fibres can cause other respiratory diseases like asbestosis, which scars the lungs and causes severe breathing difficulties, disability and death.
Experts have told ITV News that more than 5,000 people have been diagnosed with diseases directly linked to the asbestos in Kymore, out of a total population of less than 30,000.
Turner and Newall was one of the biggest companies in the UK, making vast sums of money manufacturing a variety of asbestos products.
The company was aware of the dangers caused by asbestos fibres. The first person recorded to have died of asbestosis, Nellie Kershaw in 1924, worked at their factory in Rochdale.
Broken bits of asbestos are littered all across Kymore
The Kymore factory was opened after new regulations were brought in to protect people in the UK, but the same rules weren’t introduced in India, despite it being under British rule at the time.
The company dumped waste from the production process in the town, uncovered, for more than 50 years. Turner and Newall went bankrupt in 2001, after being sued by victims in the UK and US.
The company was responsible for the Armley Asbestos Disaster, where hundreds of people died as a result of inhaling fibres in and around a factory in a suburb of Leeds.
A small compensation fund was created for Indian factory workers and their families as part of the insolvency agreement, but nothing was left to clear up the mess in Kymore.
Workers and their families receive a fraction of the amount a court would have awarded.
Kirshnendu Mukherjee, a lawyer from the UK, has dedicated his life to helping workers in Kymore get access to the limited compensation.
“It’s a scandal, isn’t it?”, he says while standing next to an enormous pile of waste, two metres away from a family home. “A life in India should be valued the same as a life in the UK”.
“I think Turner and Newall have got away with it because at one stage they were the largest asbestos product company in the world, making significant profits for themselves and their shareholders and their directors, whilst exposing people, their workers and their families to asbestos”.
Under Indian law, the ‘polluter pays’, meaning the cost of cleanup is the responsibility of the private company rather than the government. In this instance, the polluter no longer exists.
The new owners claim they follow international standards inside the factory and that they don’t dump asbestos in the town.
They could be legally obliged to pay for some of the clear-up costs of the waste, even though it was left by previous owners, but Krishnendu says that filing a claim would be unaffordable for residents and that the company almost certainly couldn’t afford it.
“The cost can be very difficult to meet, and the average civil suit in India takes between 20 and 25 years to fruition”, he says.
There’s very little in British law that would prevent a company from carrying out similar damage in foreign countries.
Asbestos is banned in Britain, but nothing stops a British-owned company from making and using it abroad.
There’s no comprehensive legal obligation for British companies to check their overseas operations for harm to people or the environment.
In response to the ITV News investigation, the UK government said: “These claims are truly shocking, and our thoughts are with all those who have lost loved ones as a result of these irresponsible actions.
“We expect all UK companies to respect human rights and the environment throughout their operations and supply chains, and we are also considering the findings of a review of the UK’s approach to responsible business conduct.”
The full-length version of this report will be available later on Thursday afternoon on ITV News’ YouTube channel.
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