Cigar-shaped bike to check smoking

An environmental activist in Hyderabad has come out with a novel idea to support a ban on smoking in public places. He has prepared a motorbike shaped like a cigar by scrap.


M.K. Sudhakar is already registered in the Guinness Book of World Records for making the largest tricycle in the world.

To make people break the habit of smoking, he literally hacked the cigar-shaped motorbike into pieces in full public view.

"I got the idea after the Government banned public smoking. I am supporting the government by taking this stand. Earlier also, I made condom to create AIDS awareness. I made this bike in a record time of 11 days using complete scrap, even the engine is picked up from the junkyard," said Sudhakar.

Officials of the leisure club that hosted the launch of the 'cigar bike' lauded the move to create awareness on smoking ban.

"To support the cause and to break the habit, here we are cutting and breaking the cigarette so that people should not smoke in public places and avoid smoking over all," said Srikant Sharma, General Manager, Country Club.

India banned smoking in public places on October 2 in an attempt to fight tobacco use, which is blamed directly or indirectly for a fifth of all deaths in the world here.

The ban covers places like schools and colleges, pubs and discotheques, hospitals and bus stops. Offenders can be fined 200 rupees as per the latest rule.

Official figures say that with its 240 million tobacco users India has annual cigarette sales of about 102 billion sticks.

With cigarette sales growing at an average annual rate of about five to six per cent, ICICI Securities estimates, India is one of the few world markets to show growth in cigarette consumption.

With the ban, India follows countries such as Britain, France, South Africa and Thailand.