Parliament security breached on 2001 attack anniversary, 2 open smoke canisters in Lok Sabha

In a sensational breach of security on the 22nd anniversary of the 2001 terror attack on

Parliament

, two men jumped down from the visitors’ gallery of

Lok Sabha

on Wednesday and opened coloured-smoke canisters, engulfing the House in thick yellow plumes and triggering panic among MPs.

The breach, which came just after PM Narendra Modi and others had paid tribute to security personnel killed in the 2001 Jaish-e-Mohammad attack, laid bare the serious lapses in Parliament security.

For starters, frisking of visitors doesn’t include checking footwear, in which the intruders, apparently inspired by Bhagat Singh and Che Guevara, had stuffed the smoke canisters.

The dramatic use of smoke cans, available over the counter and frequently used for celebrations, inside one of the most fortified complexes has exposed both the vulnerability to a terrorist who might smuggle in an explosive or a hazardous chemical hidden inside his shoe and the inability of agencies to wisen up to ever-evolving threats.
The home ministry has ordered an inquiry into the

security breach

. A committee has been set up under CRPF chief Anish Dayal Singh, with members from other security agencies and experts. The committee will probe the reasons for the breach, identify lapses and recommend further action.

The intrusion led the opposition to attack the government which has cited the drop in terror incidents under its watch.
The breach came as a grim reminder of the 2001 strike which left nine dead and led to India mobilising its armed forces on the border in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with Pakistan.
The two LS intruders —

Manoranjan

D, a 34-year-old engineering graduate from Mysuru, and Sagar Sharma, a 27-year-old e-rickshaw driver from Lucknow, who entered the House on the recommendation of BJP MP Prathap Simha — were nabbed by MPs and thrashed before they were taken into custody. Around the same time as the duo stunned Lok Sabha by slithering from Gallery 4 along a pillar into the chamber, two others — Neelam Kaur Azad (37) from Hisar in Haryana, who has been a familiar figure at protest sites since at least the farmers’ agitation, and Amol Shinde (25) from Latur in Maharashtra — set off smoke cans outside Parliament. Kaur and Shinde were also arrested.
A fifth suspect, Vikram alias Vicky, who had lodged them in Gurgaon, was arrested from near Parliament while another, Lalit Jha, who is from Bihar and is suspected to be the handler of the group, remained at large defying raids by police at his Gurgaon residence.
Initially, there was lack of clarity on the motives of the trespassers, with the gang appearing to be a disparate collective. Slogans bellowed by Neelam — ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’, ‘Tanashahi Nahin Chalegi’, ‘Jai Bheem’ — did not dispel the haze as each has been the battle cry of groups that don’t gel. But as the interrogation of the accused and investigation progressed, they did not appear to be quite the melange of malcontents they had seemed.
Sources said they got to know each other on a Facebook page called ‘Bhagat Singh Fan Club’ and soon clustered into a group, seeking to emulate the revolutionary freedom fighter who captured the imagination by hurling, along with Batukeshwar Dutt, a bomb in the Central Assembly in 1929. Plans to pull off something dramatic inside Parliament were initiated at least a year ago when members of the group gathered in Karnataka and motivated Manoranjan to lobby Simha, his representative in Lok Sabha, to facilitate their entry.

As part of the plan, Manoranjan carried out a recee of Parliament in March, the exercise revealing a chink — frisking by security personnel not extending to shoes — that was exploited on Wednesday.
The group wanted to make a “statement” and were carrying the national flag and pamphlets.
Sagar, who described himself as a devotee of Bhagat Singh and leftist revolutionary Che Guevara, told his family in Lucknow that he was going for a “protest”. “Beware, Bollywood, cricket, bigotry, blind trends, drug addiction, gambling etc, these are big tools to distract attention from the problems of the country,” reads one of Sharma’s posts. He also shared a poster with a quote, ‘Efforts are being made to blind the youth who have to lead the country tomorrow’, attributed to Bhagat Singh.
Whether the enlistment of Simha’s support was deliberate soon became a matter of political recrimination with Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah and opposition MPs Shashi Tharoor and Danish Ali highlighting it. BJP, after initially keeping quiet, fired back by circulating a video of Neelam praising Congress and asking for a change of the BJP government in Haryana and attributing the security scare to a Congress plot.
During the attack, while Manoranjan remained standing at the back of the House, Sharma scaled tables and ran towards the Speaker’s podium, but was apprehended midway by MPs Gurjeet Aujla, Malook Nagar and Hanuman Beniwal, among others, who held him until the marshals rushed to take the two men into custody.
While the House resumed for business at 2pm, opposition members sought a discussion on the security breach. Speaker Om Birla assured the House that no dangerous chemical was found inside the canister. He also said a high-level inquiry had been ordered and action would be taken after a detailed review of the security apparatus.