New Delhi, Jul 22: The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a plea seeking direction for removing designated smoking zones from commercial places and airports, increasing the age of smoking, banning the sale of cigarettes near educational institutions, healthcare institutions and places of worship, ANI reported.
A bench headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul while declining to entertain the plea said, “If you want publicity argue a good case… Don’t file publicity interest litigation”. The plea had sought direction for increasing the penalty for smoking in public places, ban of the sale of loose cigerrates, creation of guidelines to handle filtration of air at places that have smoking zones, “Issue guidelines and direct dedicated ions for closing the smoking zones at airports, clubs, restaurants, hotels, public places and even in private properties being used for commercial purposes in a phased manner so as not to induce smoking among nonsmokers. Issue directions towards increasing the age to smoke from 18 to 21 years,” the plea stated as per ANI.
The plea filed by advocates Shubham Awasthi and Saptarishi Mishra mentioned that the sale and addiction of cigarettes in the country and such products affect citizen’s right to health and the open smoking in places like airports, restaurants and clubs in designated smoking zones influences the adolescent population wrongly to take up smoking.
“In 2018, WHO released its factsheet on the prevalence on tobacco consumption in India and it has quoted younger population in India to be at increased chances of cardio-vascular diseases and tobacco among which cigarettes are a major contributor killing 9 million people in India or 9.5 per cent of all deaths in India,” the plea had said.
Advertisement
In the present times, the rate of smoking has been growing for the last two decades and it has grown into such an epidemic that India now ranks 2nd in the smokers’ category for the 16-64 age group, it claimed.
A study published in the Journal of Nicotine and Tobacco Research has flagged the severe economic burden of secondhand smoke exposure in India, the plea had stated.
Advertisement
It had added that the study revealed that secondhand smoke causes Rs. 567 billion in health care costs annually. “This accounts for eight per cent of total annual health care expenditure, on top of Rs.
1,773 billion in annual economic burden from tobacco use. Smoking not only affects lungs but also causes vision loss,” stated the PIL.
On Sunday, the man again had a quarrel with his mother and complained that she did not cook and serve him tasty food, the police said quoting the FIR.
Advertisement
The man, in a fit of anger, allegedly attacked his mother with a sickle on her neck following which she collapsed and died, the official said.
Some persons from the neighbourhood alerted police, who rushed to the spot and sent the body to a government hospital for post-mortem.
After the incident, the accused allegedly had an overdose of sleeping pills. He was hospitalised by relatives and has not yet been arrested, the official said.
Advertisement
A case was registered on Monday against the accused under Indian Penal Code section 302 (murder), he said.
In Agra, a 70-year-old man was seen putting up the wooden sign “Main Zinda Hun (I am alive).” According to Dinanath Yadav, the Agra resident, he was declared dead by the employees at the office of Agra’s Chief Development Officer (CDO).
Carrying the wooden placard around his neck, Yadav appeared before the Agra District Magistrate office on Sunday, claiming he was “maliciously” declared dead by the state government employees in March this year, India Today reported.
Surprised at his claim, the District Magistrate pursued the documents produced by Yadav and issued instructions to the CDO’s staff to ascertain how he was pronounced dead.Speaking to India Today, Dinanath Yadav said that he is in perfect health, goes to his farms every day, and has even been drawing an old-age pension for the past two years.
However, his pension stopped in March this year and he was not given a satisfactory answer when he contacted the village Secretary, he said.According to Yadav, he went to the CDO office where he learned that a staffer had shown him as dead in the government records, which not only caused his pension to stop but could also lead to several legal issues for him in the future.
He said that he had tried to contact the District Magistrate several times in the past eight months. He decided to walk into the DM’s office with a placard hanging from his neck that read “Main Zinda Hoon”.
Yadav said that the District Magistrate immediately called up the village Panchayat Secretary in Etmadpur and instructed him to file a full report, resolving his problem.
When asked if he was aware of the issue, Block Development Officer (BDO) Anirudh Singh said that he did come across this case but since he was on leave, he was unable to comment on it.
Advertisement
Social activist Vijay Upadhyay pointed out that this is not a solitary case, and there were hundreds of such men in Uttar Pradesh, who have been pronounced dead on government records and are struggling to prove that they are alive.
In a strange incident, a woman allegedly bit off her husband’s ear during a verbal altercation out of fury. According to a police officer on Sunday, the event happened on November 20 in the Sultanpuri neighborhood of Delhi.
The victim, a 45-year-old man told the police about the incident and reported an FIR after she underwent an ear surgery.
The man told the police, “I went to throw garbage outside my house around 9.20 am on November 20. I asked my wife to clean the house. Soon after I returned home, my wife started fighting with me over an unknown issue.”
The complaint was filed on November 22, two days after the incident took place. An FIR has been registered against the women following the complaint under Section 324 (voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and further investigation is on into the matter. The victim, whose name has not been revealed yet, also told the police that his wife asked him to sell the house and give her a share so that she could stay separately with the children.
Advertisement
“I tried to make her understand, but a verbal spat ensued. She even tried to hit me, but I pushed her away. I was walking out of the house when she held me from the back and in a fit of rage bit my right ear so hard that the upper portion of my ear got dismembered,” the victim said.
After the incident, the victim’s son took him to Sanjay Gandhi Hospital in Mangolpuri for treatment. He then underwent surgery at Jaipur Golden Hospital in Rohini.
The police said that they received information about the attack on November 20 from a hospital and a team was sent to investigate the matter.
Advertisement
According to a senior police officer, the victim was unwell and not in a condition to give a statement. He had requested the police that he would come to the police station later to give his statement. Police said further investigations are underway and they are looking into verifying the allegations.