Sunita Tomar, the face of the government’s anti-tobacco campaign has died at Mumbai’s Tata Memorial Hospital. She was afflicted with oral cancer.
However, she campaigned against tobacco use till the end.
Two days before her death, she had written a letter to PM Modi expressing distress at BJP MP Dilip Gandhi’s remark ‘Tobacco doesn’t cause cancer.’
In her letter she wrote,
Recently Dilip Gandhi, chairman of a Parliamentary panel, wrote to the Health Ministry asking for the notification on bigger tobacco pack warnings to be kept in abeyance. I was shocked that people in such high posts can be so irresponsible. Bigger warnings can probably save some innocent lives like mine. You have started to take people along in your Mann Ki Baat where you recently talked about de-addiction. I hope you will also take up the cause of tobacco.
— Sunita Tomar, Anti-Tobacco Campaigner
Earlier in the week, BJP MP Dilip Gandhi had said that there is no Indian study to confirm that use of tobacco products leads to cancer.
He said this at a time when the decision to increase pictorial warnings from 40% to 85% could be delayed.
In his statement Gandhi had said,
There is no Indian survey report to prove that tobacco consumption leads to cancer. Cancer does not happen only because of tobacco.
— Dilip Gandhi, BJP MP
Sunita, 28, featured in a 30-second advertisement made under the National Tobacco Control Programme. The advertisement was a part of a mass media campaign launched by the government to warn people about the dangers of using ‘smokeless’ tobacco.
She lived in a small town of Madhya Pradesh with her truck driver husband, two teenage sons and in-laws.