 He formed the Children Against Carbide organization in 1987, when he was fifteen.Born in Bhopal in 1972, the son of a carpenter, Verma lived in JP Nagar, near the plant run by Union Carbide, now a subsidiary of Dow Chemicals, when the gas leak occurred on 3 December 1984.He and his family tried to escape, as the poisonous cloud of methyl isocyanate gas descended on the slum settlement in Madhya Pradesh's state capital.