The first time he smoked a cigarette, he did not inhale the smoke. Instead, the 14-year-old trapped it in his mouth and let it out with a cough. Three more puffs and the wheezing led to nausea. Each of this was caught on the camera of a smartphone — from the time the cigarette was sold till the last puff was exhaled. The entire act was shot by two boys on a smartphone. On the basis of the footage, Delhi Police arrested the vendor at the paan kiosk, identified as Jatinder Bhasin (40), on Sunday under Section 77 of the amended Juvenile Justice Act. The two cousins, aged 14 and 16, while talking to The Indian Express, said that they used to spot many children from well-off families as well as the streets smoke cigarettes around the paan kiosk on a daily basis. “I used to see the open flesh of a cancer patient (on packets). It would repulse me; I thought the boys should not smoke. But cigarettes were very easily available. My father had spoken to the vendor but he continued to sell tobacco to children,” the 16-year-old said. Two days before the ‘sting’ operation, the two cousins had roped in two friends. They were tasked with shooting the sting. They scouted for a location from which the whole thing could be captured,” the 14-year-old said. The cousins had also discussed what to do if anything went wrong. “If our friends were caught, we would have pretended that we did not know them,” the boy said, laughing. The two children operating the camera positioned themselves atop a car while the cousins bought two cigarettes and two gutkha packets. But that was not enough to establish the sale, so one of the boys decided to smoke near the kiosk. “My father is proud of us. He knew that children were smoking in the open. We finally had the proof we needed. It was just like those detective serials we watched,” the 14-year-old said.
