The sarin release on the Tokyo subway on 20 March 1995 killed thirteen people and injured thousands, and it was not the group's first use of the agent. Sarin had already been released at Matsumoto in June 1994, a case in which a local resident who had himself been injured was treated as the suspect by police and press for months before the movement's responsibility emerged.
Japan's response is unusual among states that have faced a violent movement, because the strongest instrument available was considered and then declined. The Public Security Investigation Agency applied to have the group dissolved under the Subversive Activities Prevention Act, a law of 1952 that had never once been used. In January 1997 the Public Security Examination Commission refused the application, holding that the organisation no longer presented the danger the statute required. The refusal is regularly cited as the moment the postwar constraints on that law were confirmed rather than relaxed.
What was enacted instead was narrower. The Religious Corporations Law was amended in 1995 to increase disclosure and oversight of registered religious bodies, and a statute of 1999, usually rendered in English as the Organization Control Law, placed the successor organisation under a reporting and inspection regime that has been renewed repeatedly since.
The movement did not end. It divided, the larger part continuing as Aleph and a smaller body forming as Hikari no Wa under Fumihiro Joyu, both of them under observation. Shoko Asahara and twelve others were executed in July 2018, more than twenty three years after the attack.