Should the Supreme Court allow Aruna Shanbaug to die?

A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court of India by writer Pinki Virani on behalf of Aruna Shanbaug, a former nurse who is lying comatose in Mumbai's KEM Hospital for the last 36 years, following a brutal sexual assault by a sweeper, that she be allowed to die.

The court has issued notices to the Centre and to the Maharashtra government on the petition, observing that "under the law of the country, we cannot allow a person to die".

Aruna, now 59, 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 36 years. Valmiki was convicted for attempt to murder and for robbing Aruna's earrings, but never tried for rape.

A Supreme Court bench headed by chief justice KG Balakrishnan expressed concern when lawyer Shekhar Nafde, appearing for Virani, suggested that Aruna not be fed. Nafde said this could not be considered a plea for euthanasia; Aruna's case was not about human rights, he said, and her life was worse than an "animal existence".

Should the Supreme Court make an exception in Aruna Shanbaug's case and let her die?