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The name Vladas Zajanckausas isn't one that jumps out of the headlines here in America, much less in India. He's a 93-year-old Lithuanian-American, who for years has been fighting a US government move to deport him for trial to Lithuania for alleged Nazi war crimes.

The case is illustrative of how when the US government wants to, it can pursue a criminal no matter how old he is and how long it takes them to nail him. Despite a Massachusetts district court stripping him of his US citizenship in 2006, Zajanckauskas remains in the United States as his lawyers appeal his case. He most recently wrote a 99-page memoir titled My Bits of Life in This Beautiful World, which describes his childhood and wartime experiences.

But bit by bit, the US Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations has been relentlessly chipping away at his defense in an effort to deport him, a result that will make him the oldest person ever to stand trial for war crimes. In another case involving a nonagenarian, after legal wrangles that lasted more than two decades, the U.S Supreme Court in 2009 ordered the deportation of John Demjanjuk, a retired auto worker similarly accused of Nazi war crimes. Taken from his Cleveland home in an ambulance, Demjanjuk, who is 90, was put on a plane to Germany, where he now awaits trial.

So far, there is no such intent or purpose from Washington in the case of Union Carbide's Warren Anderson, who is now nearing 90, and living in seclusion in a Long Island suburb in New York. US officials have indicated that they would prefer the matter of Anderson's extradition not be reopened, even as a raging debate has erupted in India over how he was allowed to leave India in the aftermath of the disaster.

While the scuttlebutt is that the then Reagan administration put pressure on New Delhi to release Anderson (he is said to have come to India after explicit assurances that he will not be arrested), the US is a different place in a different mood today, particularly after the BP oil spill disaster. Although the Obama administration's initial reaction was to duck questions about Anderson's extradition, there are dissenting voices even within the political establishment who make no concession for the Bhopal villain's age, given the gravity of the crime.

"Warren Anderson absolutely deserves to be extradited from the US and punished for the full extent of his crimes," Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Congressman said in a statement on Wednesday, challenging the Obama administration's dodginess on the matter. "As chairman of Union Carbide at the time of the Bhopal gas disaster, Mr. Anderson was ultimately responsible for his company's actions."

After nearly 15 years in hiding, and almost a decade after he was declared an absconder by an Indian court, Anderson was served papers in 2002 by a Greenpeace activist, around the same time a US Marshal knocked on Zajanckauskas door to serve him his papers. But while the US government's relentless pursuit of justice in that case has caused Zajanckauskas $200,000 in legal bills, forced him to sell his house in Millbury, and taken a toll on his health and that of his 81-year-old wife, Vladislava, Anderson continues to live a quiet, retired life with his wife Lillian, untouched by the law. The couple lives in a million-dollar home in a Long Island suburb and owns another property in Florida, to where they repair during winter.

Environmental activists believe that the time may now be ripe now to renew pressure on Washington to act against Anderson. "The BP disaster and the general mood against corporate excesses provide an opening for this," says Bridget Hanna, a Harvard scholar and author of The Bhopal Reader: Remembering Twenty Years of The World's Worst Industrial Disaster, who has been an ardent activist for the victims, spending months at a time in Bhopal. "The Obama administration may be more receptive on this matter."

So far though, there is no indication that New Delhi is ready to engage Washington on the matter, despite support from U.S quarters. Hanna, who will return to India in September this year to spend the next two years in Bhopal, feels that with growing environmental consciousness across the world, a disaster that seemed to have faded away from public memory has returned and New Delhi should press for both justice and greater reparation Pallone agrees, saying "All those responsible for this disaster, including Warren Anderson, should stand trial in India and receive punishment that reflects the devastation and pain they have caused for thousands of people."

Anderson meanwhile has not spoken to the issue after being largely unrepentant at the time of the disaster and maintaining it was the responsibility of Carbide's Indian subsidiary. Except to say that Union Carbide had been stigmatized and would spend decades trying to erase the stain, he expressed little regret. That stain has not been erased; nor has Bhopal's pain.