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| Edited By: |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 07, 2011, 02:45 PM IST
The Supreme Court dismissed a plea for the mercy killing of Aruna Ramachandra Shanbaug who, since the last 37 years, has been existing in a vegetative state in a Mumbai hospital.
Aruna, now 60, joined Mumbai's King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital as a nurse in 1966. She was brutally attacked by ward boy Sohanlal Valmiki in 1973. Aruna was menstruating at the time, so Valmiki sodomised her after strangling her with a dog chain, cutting off the oxygen supply to her brain.
The attack left Aruna blind, paralysed and comatose for 37 years. Valmiki was convicted of attempt to murder and robbery, but never tried for rape.
The apex court, however, said that medical and other material evidence suggested that Aruna did not deserve to be euthanised.
Do you think that the Supreme Court was right in upholding Aruna's right to life or do you think that she should be put out of her perceived misery?
