 "Lok sabha attack")
In a major security breach on the 22nd anniversary of a deadly attack on Parliament, two men on Wednesday afternoon jumped inside the Lok Sabha chamber from its visitor’s gallery where they set off yellow smoke emitting canisters they had concealed in their shoes, leading to chaos.
As they jumped on the desks and shouted slogans, some of the Opposition MPs overpowered and thrashed them before handing them over to the security staff. Around the same time, in a coordinated move, a woman and a man burst a similar canister outside the Parliament House premises and shouted slogans, such as “tanashahi nahin chalegi”, “Bharat Mata ki Jai”, “Jai Bhim”, and “Bhagat Singh Zindabad”.
The incident in the Lok Sabha took place at 1.01 pm as Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Khagen Murmu was speaking during Zero Hour, with nearly a hundred MPs present in the House, including Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah were away, attending the oath-taking ceremonies of the new chief ministers in Bhopal and Raipur. While one of the men jumped across benches in an effort to approach the Speaker’s chair, the other dangled from the railing of the visitor’s gallery, which is lower compared to the old Lok Sabha chambers, before lowering himself into the chamber.
Security has been tightened in the area following the incident.
On December 13, 2001, more than a dozen people, including five gunmen, were killed in an attack on Parliament complex by Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists.
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The Wednesday incident took place amid a police alert in the national capital after Khalistani separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun reportedly threatened to attack the Indian “Parliament on or before December 13”. However, the police have not found any links of the woman and men behind the latest incident to terror outfits.
The four are now in the Delhi Police custody, who nabbed a fifth accomplice from Gurugram later in the day and are looking for their sixth associate.
In Parliament, Opposition members demanded Union Home Minister Amit Shah make a statement on the security breach and walked out of the Rajya Sabha, while Trinamool Congress sought the expulsion of BJP’s Mysuru Lok Sabha member Prathap Simha who had signed the visitors’ pass of the two men who breached the Lok Sabha security. Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla later convened an all-party meeting where Opposition MPs flagged security loopholes, including shortage of security staff.
Sources said Manoranjan D, an engineering graduate from Mysuru, and Sagar Sharma from Lucknow had jumped inside the Lok Sabha chambers. Neelam Azad, from Haryana’s Jind, who holds a couple of masters’ degrees, and Amol Shinde, a graduate from Latur in Maharashtra, who has appeared for police recruitment exams, protested outside the premises of Parliament. The police later nabbed their accomplice Vikram while Lalit is still at large. Police sources said the six, who have known each other for three to four years, kept contact over Instagram and other social media platforms to hatch the plan, but only two of them could secure Lok Sabha passes.
During interrogation, Amol said they were upset with issues, such as unemployment, farmers’ protest, and the ethnic strife in Manipur. At the time of being detained, Neelam claimed to the media that neither she nor her associates belonged to any political outfit. According to her friends and relatives, the 35-year-old, who has appeared in several competitive exams, had earlier participated in the farmers’ protests and was detained during the protest by wrestlers at Jantar Mantar earlier this year.
Manoranjan and Sagar had passes that allowed them to sit for 45 minutes in the visitors’ gallery, but they sat for close to two hours. As a rule, Parliament’s security staff usher visitors out from the gallery near the deadline of their passes.
Lok Sabha officials said the issuance of passes for the visitors’ gallery in the Parliament House has been suspended with immediate effect.
Eyewitnesses said the two men sat quietly in the visitors’ gallery before suddenly jumping into the chamber. BJP MP Simha’s assistants said Manoranjan came to the MP’s office often and introduced Sagar Sharma as a friend, and got passes issued so that they could see the new Parliament.
In Mysuru, Devaraje Gowda, father of Manoranjan, said his son, who completed his engineering degree in 2016, was a “good boy”, “honest and truthful”, with a desire to do good for the society and inspired by Swami Vivekananda, reported PTI.
