Keswani was the first journalist to bring attention to the safety lapses and impending Bhopal disaster that eventually came to pass at the town's Union Carbide pesticides plant overnight on 2–3 December 1984.
For internal information sources Keswani found two people who were fired — Bashirullah and Shankar Malviya who helped him to get hold of all manuals and confidential reports.
On 5 October, four days after the second article, 18 people at the Union Carbide plant were exposed to a mixture of chloroform, methyl isocyanate and hydrochloric acid from a leaking valve.
In the article "Bhopal: On the Brink of a Disaster,"[2][3] Keswani reported on a series of incidents and asserted that the leak on 5 October 1982 had affected thousands of residents of neighboring slum districts who fled in fear and returned only after eight hours.
[4][5][6] Keswani reported a Telex exchange Union Carbide India manager J. Mukund (one of the accused who was convicted on 7 June) sent asking for advice about coating the pipes.
His conviction that the Union Carbide Bhopal plant was headed for disaster grew out of two small pieces of information that he happened to read independently.
[12] In 2014 Bollywood film Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain, journalist Motwani's character, played by Kal Penn, is loosely based on Rajkumar Keswani.