In March 2011, the Supreme Court had allowed "passive euthanasia" of withdrawing life support to patients in permanently vegetative state, but had refused mercy killing of Aruna Shanbaug.
Sixty-six year-old Aruna Shanbaug, a former nurse who lived in a vegetative state for the past 42 years after being brutally sexually assaulted at the KEM Hospital in Mumbai and became the face of the debate on euthanasia in India, died on Monday.
In March 2011, the Supreme Court had allowed "passive euthanasia" of withdrawing life support to patients in permanently vegetative state, but had refused mercy killing of Aruna Shanbaug.
A two-judge bench of Justice Markandeya Katju and Justice Gyan Sudha Mishra, laid a set of tough guidelines under which passive euthanasia could be legalised through high court monitored mechanism.
Pinki Virani, a national-award winning writer journalist and a social activist, who had written a book on her called Aruna's Story, had filed a writ petition under criminal original jurisdiction in the Supreme Court for mercy killing on behalf of the petitioner Aruna Shanbaug under Article 32 of Constitution of India.
In her petition, Virani pleaded with the SC to let Aruna die peacefully and stop being fed. "Aruna cannot be said to exist, in the sense, a human being is supposed to live. She is virtually dead and a skeleton. Moreover, there is not the lightest possibility of any improvement in her condition and her body is lying on the bed in KEM hospital like a dead animal, and this has been the situation for the last 37 years," the petition said.
However, doctors from KEM hospital countered the petition. Dr Amar Ramaji Pazare, Professor and Head in KEM hospital, filed a counter affidavit in which he said, "Aruna accepts food in normal course and responds to commands by facial expressions or by making sounds. She appears to be happy and smiles when she receivers her favourite food items. She also enjoys devotional songs and music which is played in her room and it has calming effect on her. She makes sounds when she is in need of any help from the hospital staff. She definitely does not seem to be living a painful and miserable life."
Rejecting Virani's plea for Aruna's mercy killing, the SC in March 2011 said, "In the case of nurse Aruna, it is for the KEM hospital staff to take that decision and not writer Pinky Virani...the hospital staff have been amazingly caring for her day and night for so many long years, who really are her next friends, and not Ms. Pinky Virani. Hence it is for the KEM hospital staff to take that decision. And the KEM hospital staff have clearly expressed their wish that Aruna Shanbaug should be allowed to live."
The bench, in its 141-page ruling, said in the case of Aruna, the plea for her mercy killing could be permitted if KEM Hospital makes it to the Bombay high court on her behalf and the high court accepts it.
Aruna was working as a staff nurse at the KEM hospital when on November 27, 1973, she was raped by ward boy Sohanlal Bhartha Walmiki. He had strangled her with a dog chain. The asphyxiation cut off oxygen supply to her brain, leaving her in a vegetative state since then. Sohanlal was caught and convicted, and served two concurrent seven-year sentences for assault and robbery, but neither for rape or sexual molestation, nor for the alleged "unnatural sexual offence."
Aruna, who was one of the comatose patients for the longest duration of time, was put on ventilator support in the ICU of the hospital at Parel after she suffered from a serious bout of pneumonia last week.
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