Tokyo subway sarin attack (1995): Monday, 20 March

Tokyo 20 March 1995 is the type investigation in which arrests, chemistry identifications and a decade of trials left almost no mystery — and still remade how Japan watches religious corporations. What the public record says happened Five coordinated releases occurred on Teito Rapid Transit Authority (now Tokyo Metro) lines during the Monday rush, aimed at trains passing Kasumigaseki, the ministry quarter. Station staff and passengers were among the dead. Hospitals treated thousands for exposure. The page stops at that public sequence.

Police raided Aum facilities from 22 March 1995, including the Kamikuishiki complex in Yamanashi. They arrested more than 200 members over the following months. Asahara was found at Kamikuishiki on 16 May. Seized materials and later confessions built a trial record that English reporters summarised as a “cult laboratory” without needing a recipe.

Investigators also reopened the Sakamoto family murders of November 1989 and other Aum crimes. The subway case became the centre of a wider criminal enterprise file: prior killings, the Matsumoto attack, and the 20 March operation ordered as police pressure closed in. Japanese courts sentenced Asahara to death in February 2004 on thirteen counts including the subway attack. The Supreme Court rejected his final appeal in 2006. Other senior members received death or life terms. About 190 Aum members were convicted in related cases; thirteen death sentences were eventually carried out in July 2018 after the last related appeal ended.