A group of coal town students have launched a crusade against smoking in Dhaiya, Dhanbad, as a part of their New Year resolution to stem all social evils.

Five students - two each from ISM and SSLNT Women's College and one from PK Roy Memorial College - visited Nagstan village, adjacent to the ISM campus, on Friday to spread awareness among villagers about the illeffects of consuming cigarette, gutka, paan masala and other tobacco-based products.

The students, led by ISM's Saurabh Mishra, a second-year undergraduate student of mechanical engineering, gathered at Student Education Academy, a local school, and carried out a live experiment to demonstrate how smoking damages human lungs.

The others are Iffat Ara, second-year BSc (physics honours) and Ritu Rani, second-year BA (history honours) - both from SSLNT Women's College - Soni Kumari, a first-year MSc (zoology) student of PK Roy College and Akash Agarwal, a second-year electrical engineering student of ISM.

The students took a plastic water bottle and made a hole the size of a cigarette in its cap and another in the bottom. Then, they filled 75 per cent of the bottle with water and used a pen as a stopper to prevent leakage from the bottom hole.

Thereafter, they lit a cigarette and inserted its filter part inside the hole in the cap, keeping the remaining part out in the air.

Later, they removed the pen-stopper to allow the water to drain out.

As soon as the water came out, the stopper was inserted again to prevent air to enter through the bottom hole. The vacuum thus created helped draw in air through the cap hole along with the smoke of the cigarette. The students, then, removed the pen and placed a filter paper on the bottle hole. Soon, a thick layer of dark smoke deposited on the filter paper.

Explaining the entire experiment to 50-odd villagers gathered at the local school, Mishra showed the filter paper and said that similar tar from cigarettes accumulated in human lungs, increasing chances of several diseases, including cancer.

Their unique demonstration managed to strike a chord with the villagers.

Sulochana Devi (35), a housewife at the awareness programme, said: 'Though I had some ideas about the bad effects of smoking, the live demonstration worked as an eye-opener.'

Priya Devi (42), another village woman, echoed Sulochana.

'I will not allow any of my family members to smoke from today. And if necessary, I will give a similar demonstration to them, highlighting the ill-effects of smoking.'