Accused modified shoes to hide colour bombs, say cops

The grave breach of Parliament that shocked the nation was a well-planned conspiracy going back nearly a year and involved one of the intruders getting a cobbler in Lucknow to carve 2.5-inch deep cavities in the soles of two pairs of shoes to stuff canisters of yellow smoke that triggered alarm in the heart of India’s democracy, investigators said on Thursday.

- Sanjeev K Jha

Four people accused of the crime – Sagar Sharma and Manoranjan D, who walked past three layers of security before rappelling down from the visitors’ gallery and spraying coloured smoke inside the Lok Sabha, and Amol Shinde and Neelam Singh, who were arrested while shouting slogans outside Parliament – were remanded to police custody for seven days on Thursday. A fifth accused, co-conspirator Lalit Jha, was arrested on Thursday night.

Police said they were focusing on the role of 34-year-old Manoranjan, an engineering graduate from Mysuru who used his family connections to procure two visitor passes from local parliamentarian Pratap Simha. Manoranjan had hosted the three male accused in Mysuru in 2021-22 to “discuss social issues” and had also met Neelam a year ago, police added.

“He was very active on Facebook and Instagram and always motivated them to do something big like a protest at Parliament,” said the investigator, requesting anonymity. “He told police that they wanted to get attention of the Prime Minister so that government may look into issues such as inflation and poverty.”

The incursion – which came on the anniversary of the 2001 Parliament attack – was planned on a later date, December 14, but was brought forward after Manoranjan received the passes early, added the investigator.

A day after the brazen attack that triggered an uproar in Parliament and sparked troubling questions about lax security protocols, police pored over papers and interrogation transcripts to piece together the unlikely conspiracy stitched together by an e-rickshaw driver in Lucknow, the son of wage labourers in Latur, a government job aspirant in Jind, an engineering graduate in Mysuru and a tutor from Kolkata.