The right to die

The legal and moral concerns around euthanasia. 

For Indian readers, the term 'euthanasia' evokes the memory of Aruna Shanbaug, the staff nurse at the King Edward Memorial (KEM), in Mumbai, whose dreams of marrying a young resident doctor were shattered when she was brutally sodomised by a sadistic ward boy, who then strangled her with a dog chain and left her to die in the hospital basement way back in 1973. She survived but was in a comatose state for 42 years, while her body gradually decayed, became mangled and curled into a foetal position, her nails overgrown and cutting into her flesh, her eyes open and transfixed as she was unable to even close them. During the initial days, occasionally, she would scream in fear when even a shadow fell on her – this was a sign that there was some hope of recovery. But eventually, it became clear that she would remain in a brain-dead and permanent vegetative state. She was kept alive by hospital attendants with nasal feeding and a few basic medications until she died a 'natural' death.

A journalist activist, Pinky Virani, who in 2000 brought Shanbaug's plight into the public domain through a non-fiction book titled, Aruna's Story: The true account of a rape and its aftermath, had approached the Supreme Court in 2009 to be declared her 'next friend'. Virani wanted to ensure for her the right of passive euthanasia by introducing within Indian jurisprudence the principle that the right to live a dignified life includes the right to not live an undignified life. She accused the hospital authorities of denying Shanbaug basic care, modern line of treatment and regular health check-ups, which might have improved her condition and reduced her pain.