Indian court says ‘Blue Lady’ can be broken up

India’s Supreme Court gave permission on Tuesday for ship-breakers to dismantle a former French cruise liner, the Blue Lady, that environmentalists say is lined with toxic asbestos, a report said.

The ruling followed a year of controversy over the fate of the ship, originally launched in 1960 as the SS France, that environmental groups said contained some 1,200 tonnes of cancer-causing materials.

Justices Arijit Pasayat and S.H. Kapadia gave permission to dismantle the ship at the western Alang shipyard on the basis of a technical report submitted by an expert committee appointed by it, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

The contents of the judgement were not immediately known.

The boat was turned away by Bangladesh in February 2006 on the grounds that its contents were too toxic for it to be dismantled there.

Environmental and labour rights groups have been battling lawyers representing workers at India’s Alang ship-breaking yard in coastal Gujarat state over the future of the boat.

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