The trial started in 1996 and continued for an overly long period causing frustration on part of relatives of the victims of gas attack as well as ordinary citizens. The verdict given last Friday, hence, is being seen by many as a rare occasion that provided some kind of emotional satisfaction to those who had suffered too long for an act of extremely heinous nature. The presiding judge took about four hours to read the verdict before pronouncing the death sentence. In the verdict the judge said the cult had planned to kill almost everyone in the capital by spraying 70 tons of deadly sarin gas and had envisaged a kingdom of Aum ruled by its all-powerful head as the king. The cult leader, who has been referred to in the court case by his real name Chizuo Matsumoto, was found to have masterminded 13 different criminal acts that led to the deaths of 27 people and thousands were injured.

Matsumoto, known to the people as a nearly blind, bearded man with shoulder-length hair, formed a yoga club in 1984. In 1986 he made a trip to Nepal and on his return to Japan proclaimed that at the Himalayas he was blesses with a divine doctrine that entrusted him the responsibility of guiding his followers to a utopia where they would find safe haven from the devastation of Armageddon. A year after he changed the name of the group to Aum Shinrikyo or the supreme truth, and started recruiting followers who would be ready to make extreme sacrifice for him. The cult guru also cherished the political dream of becoming a national figure and in February 1990, he along with 24 other members of the cult contested in the lower house election. But none of the 25 candidates won a seat and Matsumoto realised the limitation of success in political battle, which is of completely different nature than the battle of winning the hearts of devotees by preaching for salvation of their souls through dubious ways.

In its heyday during the first half of 1990s, Aum Shinrikyo had 1,400 hardcore followers who were living in its compounds in Tokyo and other places, as well as 14,000 believers nationwide. The cult also had its overseas branch in Russia, where the collapse of communism created so much a vacuum in the moral teachings that even a religious cult as dubious as the Aum didn't have much problem in gathering scores of followers. Like many other new religious cult groups that have become a common feature of the Japanese society after World War II, Aum also had in its rank a few who had devoted everything of their material possessions for the cult and its leader. This no doubt was the main channel of funding for the cult, and by using that accumulated financial resources, the cult soon started to acquire real estates and other properties in different parts of the country and became a prominent name in the wider field of new religion in Japan. The trend continued until its final fall triggered by the sarin gas attack.

The trial of the Aum guru stands as a landmark in Japan's judicial history as one of the rare cases when a religious group has been charged for conspiring against the people. A country where the constitution firmly separates the state from all forms of religious practices, a court ruling against a group that openly preached certain version of faith and devotion is seen in Japan as quite unusual. But the cult in question has definitely deviated far from normal religious practices and vied for political power by extreme means, using religious faith only as the way to reach that goal. Hence the general feeling among people in Japan of the verdict is that of a sense of relief. The sarin gas attack has no doubt shattered people's perception about various new religious groups that have always found a fertile ground in Japan to spread their roots. The verdict would obviously have a serious repercussion on some of them who from time to time appear in news headlines for performing acts that raise eyebrows of those who are unaware of this particular trend in a country known for going through economic miracles.

People were seen lining up in front of the Tokyo District Court early in the morning on the day verdict was given against the Aum leader. It is obvious that nobody went there with a sympathetic heart for the accused and many simply wanted to be the witness to an event of profound significance. But at the same time, the verdict also leaves many riddles unsolved of which the people of Japan are eager to find correct answers ever since the subway attack back in 1995. The first and foremost of those are related to the inability of country's law enforcement agencies in dealing with crimes committed in the name of religion and also the responsibility of the state in helping the victims of such crimes.

Religious groups like Aum flourish in Japan through the financial contribution of their members that sometime might fall into the category of indirect extortion. All these happen in the presence of law enforcing agencies, which time simply overlook the possibility that a religious group might be involved in criminal acts. Aum's first sarin gas experiment in Nagano prefecture a year before the deadly attack in Tokyo was in fact overlooked by the police, who wrongly accused another person and arrested him. As Aum has now simply declared itself dissolved and a small number of its former members regrouped to form a new cult under the name Aleph, the question of how far the disease of the society has been cured since the Tokyo attack remains unresolved, for dubious religious cults are the obvious outcome of a society where not everything is going normally.

The verdict also didn't address the important issue of the responsibility of the state in helping the victims who fall pray to such attacks. A victim's group of Aum's sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995 is calling on the government to pay compensation to survivors and bereaved families. The Japanese government has not offered any compensation at all to any of the victims, despite the fact that negligence of the police agency in tracking down the group at the planning stage can easily be cited as an example of failure on part of the government in ensuring the safety of its citizens. As many such questions related to the attack were not addressed in the court verdict, victims and their families are still not convinced their physical and psychological scars will ever heal. The total silence that the Aum guru has kept throughout the trial shrouded further only the atmosphere of distrust and anger.