Japan executes cult leader
tokyo, July 6 : Japan on Friday executed the leader of the Supreme Truth cult who had masterminded the deadly sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1995.
The 63-year-old Shoko Asahara, whose real name was Chizuo Matsumoto, had been on death row more than a decade, reports Efe news.
Founded in 1984, the Japanese doomsday cult also known as Aum Shinrikyo, itself into an organisation capable of developing chemical and biological weapons in just one decade.
It even presented a list of candidates for the 1990 general election but did not win any seats in parliament.
Asahara, who had suffered partial blindness since childhood, was detained in May 1995, two months after the nerve agent attack on March 20, 1995, which killed 13 people and injured more than 6,000.
He was sentenced to death in 2004 for the attack and other crimes including another sarin gas attack in 1994 in Matsumoto, which killed eight people and injured more than 100 others.
The execution of the leader and six other members of the Supreme Truth, came as a result of a 20-year investigation in which all those involved in the incidents have been tried and convicted.
The Supreme Court rejected their appeals in January.
The Japanese Tribunal has prosecuted about 190 cult members for the attacks and other related crimes, including the 1989 murder of lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his family, and passed six life sentences and 13 death sentences.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
