An intruder penetrated security at the Indian parliament on Wednesday, leaping from the visitor’s gallery into the area reserved for lawmakers, where he shouted slogans and detonated a smoke canister hidden in his shoe before he was taken into custody.
“It all happened in half a minute or one minute,” said Rajendra Agarwal, a lawmaker from the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). “There is no doubt it was a major security lapse.”
Agarwal said he saw a second person attempting to jump from the visitor’s gallery into the reserved area, suggesting an organized demonstration or attack was in progress.
“Suddenly, two young men around 20 years old jumped into the House from the visitor’s gallery and had canisters in their hand[s]. These canisters were emitting yellow smoke. One of them was attempting to run towards the Speaker’s chair,” said Member of Parliament (MP) Karti Chidambaram.
Four people were ultimately placed under arrest, including the young man with the smoke bomb. Two suspects were demonstrating outside the parliament building while the security breach was in progress, waving similar smoke canisters.
Several members of parliament wondered how such a “serious security lapse” could occur and said they were relieved the intruder was armed with nothing worse than a smoke bomb.
The Indian parliament moved into its new, ultra-modern, and supposedly high-security headquarters in May. Among its security features is a three-level defense system that keeps a parliamentary security team inside the building while paramilitary forces and the Delhi Police protect the exterior.
Video of the incident showed members of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament, quickly surrounding the intruder and preventing him from escaping:
The incident occurred on the twenty-second anniversary of a deadly terrorist attack on the Lok Sabha.
The 2001 attack was perpetrated by Pakistani-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which seeks to drive India out of the disputed Jammu and Kashmir provinces. On that grievous occasion, the intruders were armed with Kalashnikov rifles, grenades, and a suicide bomb. They managed to kill six security guards and a gardener and wound 18 other people before security forces killed them.
The new parliamentary building was ostensibly designed to prevent another attack like the 2001 terrorist assault, but many observers noted that the intruders on Tuesday seemed to be making a deliberate mockery of parliamentary security.
“It was a terrible experience. Nobody could guess what was their target and why were they doing this. We all left the House immediately, but it was a security lapse,” said MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay.
The Times of India (TOI) reported late Wednesday morning that the number of suspects detained by police had risen to six. The man who leaped into the lawmaker’s area was identified as Amol Shinde, reportedly a failed candidate for the police force. Another of the detainees, a woman named Neelam Verma, was described by TOI as a “revolutionary” who participated in the massive farming protests of 2020-2021.
Police sources said the six suspects have known each other for years. They allegedly collaborated on social media for several days to plan their intrusion into the Lok Sabha. The original plan was for all six to enter the building, but only four could obtain visitor passes.
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