The Metropolitan Police Department's Public Safety Bureau on Saturday searched a house and other places related to a group whose members conduct the same training programs as the Aum Supreme Truth cult on suspicion of fatally assaulting a 36-year-old member earlier this month.
The Aum splinter group, named Keroyon Club, consists of about 30 members. Photographs of Chizuo Matsumoto, the 49-year-old former head of Aum, are displayed in the rooms they use for training, and their members conduct the same training programs conducted by the cult before Matsumoto was arrested.
In April 2000, the dead member's sister was found dead in the bathroom of an apartment in Nakano Ward, Tokyo, used by the group.
The police suspect she died during a ritual in which members have to lie in very hot water.
They said they would question the members of the group and investigate its activities.
The sites the police searched Saturday included the house of an acquaintance of the dead member, also a group member, in Nerima Ward, where her body was found on Sept. 11, and the apartment in Nakano Ward. Ten police officers entered the apartment carrying cardboard boxes at about 9 a.m.
According to the police, there were bruises on the dead woman's back, indicating she had been beaten before she died.
A 35-year-old male member who turned himself in to the police after the woman died said he had beaten her with a bamboo sword on the back as part of her training the day before she died.
The police said she might have died in her sleep after being beaten as part of her religious training.