The dawn raid was launched on a cult building near the winter resort city of Nagano.

Aum Supreme Truth cult members shocked the world when they spread Nazi-invented Sarin gas in Tokyo's subway in March 1995, killing 12 people and injuring thousands.

Members of Tokyo's metropolitan force and officers from Nagano district sealed off the three-storey cult building and immediately arrested 30-year-old Masahiro Guntani, manager of the facility. After questioning others in the house, they also arrested 37-year-old Ryuji Shimotori, a former senior member of the sect, officials said.

"The group imprisoned a 29-year-old woman follower between late March 1998 and April that year in its training facility" in Nagano prefecture, a prefectural police official alleged.

Sect members "tied up the woman with adhesive tape when shebegan to scream and attempted to cut her own neck with a piece of broken glass," the official added. She told police she was dipped into a bath tub until she twice lost consciousness, the official said.

The two arrested disciples allegedly ordered other cultists to stand guard so the woman could not escape. She fled on April 3, 1998 and ran to a nearby house where she asked for help.

The joint police raid came on the same day the Aum Supreme Truth was scheduled to hold a news conference in Tokyo to explain "the group's management policy."

Reports said the sect would issue a statement and admit for the first time its members launched the gas attack on Tokyo's subways to counter growing criticism. The shift came as the government planned to submit new legislation effectively banning the doomsday cult from expanding its membership and facilities, according to the press here.