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Bengaluru: An air passenger got such an urge to smoke ‘beedi’ that he lit the bidi (Smoking in Flight) in the air and started drinking it. When the smoke rose in the plane, the passengers were shocked to see this and immediately the crew stopped him from doing so. When the plane landed at the Bangalore airport, this passenger was handed over to the police. When the police interrogated the accused, the policemen were also surprised to hear from him, because he told that he smokes beedi while traveling in the train, so he thought that he can smoke beedi in an airplane as well.
In fact, a 56-year-old man, who had taken a flight from Ahmedabad to Bangalore, was arrested on landing at the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) on Tuesday afternoon. The reason was that he was accused of putting the lives of fellow passengers at risk by smoking bidi in the air. This person was traveling by Akasa Air.
According to sources, the accused, identified as M Praveen Kumar, a resident of Marwar Junction in Pali district of Rajasthan, has been sent to Bengaluru Central Jail. This is the first time in KIA that someone has been arrested for smoking beedi. Earlier this year, the KIA police booked two passengers for lighting cigarettes on the plane.
Kumar, who works in the construction industry, told the police that he was self-employed and was flying for the first time.
According to a senior police officer, “Non-recovery of beedis during the security search is a serious lapse. The only explanation for such an incident is the failure of the search.” An investigating officer said, “In Tuesday’s case, Kumar, who was flying for the first time, claimed that he was not aware of the no-smoking rule.”
He told the police, “I regularly travel by train and smoke inside the toilet. Thinking I could do the same here, I decided to smoke beedi.”
Kumar was on an Akasa flight to Bengaluru when the crew members found him smoking inside the toilet. On landing in Bengaluru at around 1.10 pm, the airline’s duty manager Vijay Thulluru lodged a complaint against Kumar with the KIA police.
