Everything You Need To Know About Aruna Shanbaug, Whose Case Led To India's Euthanasia Debate

At some point in your life, through friends, popular media or your school or college, you must have come across the term "mercy killing". The legal term for mercy killing is euthanasia and the consequences of legalising it, have over time, become a heated debate among India's intellectual, political and legal circles. The case that led to this heated debate was that of Aruna Ramchandra Shanbaug v. Union of India.

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Aruna Ramchandra Shanbaug was a nurse in the King Edwards Memorial Hospital in Mumbai when she was assaulted by a sweeper of the same hospital while changing her clothes in the hospital basement. During the assault, she was tied with a dog chain around her neck, which cut off oxygen supply from her brain and rendered her in a permanent vegetative state for the next 42 years.

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From the day of the assault till the day she died, Aruna could only survive on mashed food. She could not move her hands or legs, could not talk or perform the basic functions of a human being. Journalist-Activist Pinky Virani, who had published a book regarding her case titled Aruna's Story, filed a writ petition under Article 32 before the Supreme Court of India, asking for the legalisation of euthanasia so that Aruna's continued suffering could be terminated by withdrawing medical support. She contended that the patient had been in a permanent vegetative state for the past many years and did not have any chance of recovery at all.

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The Supreme Court accepted the petition and constituted a medical board to report back on Aruna's health and medical condition. The medical board, comprising three eminent doctors, reported that the patient was not brain dead and responded to some situations in her own way. They felt that there was no need for euthanasia in the case.

The staff at KEM Hospital and the Bombay Municipal Corporation filed their counter-petitions in the case, opposing euthanasia for Aruna. The nurses at KEM Hospital were quite happy to look after the patient and they had been doing that for years before petitioner Pinky Virani emerged on the scene.

The court, while delivering its judgment, distinguished between active and passive euthanasia. Active euthanasia means killing a person through the use of lethal substance or force, and passive euthanasia means withdrawing or discontinuing medical support necessary for the continuation of life. The court rejected the plea for euthanasia for Aruna Shanbaug but legalised passive euthanasia in the country.

The reason any debate around euthanasia generates such a heated discussion is because while our constitution recognises the right to life with dignity, it does not recognise the right to die. Therefore, a debate regarding mercy killing is just not a debate regarding the legality of such a wish, but is also a debate about the morality and ethics of such an act. With the concept of euthanasia, law enters that complex territory of medical ethics which has even divided the medical fraternity sharply in the recent past.

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Passive euthanasia did not remain legalised for long in India. In Common Cause v. Union of India, it was urged that the judgment of Aruna Ramchandra Shanbaug v Union of India was decided based on incorrect interpretation of the constitution bench's judgment in Gian Kaur v State of Punjab, and therefore it was referred to a larger constitutional bench for review and final judgment.

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Aruna Shanbaug died in May 2015, but her case helped in shedding light on an extremely complex issue of medical ethics and law. Euthanasia is currently legal in the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States. Will India join the list?

We'll have to wait and watch.

Cover image courtesy: i0.wp.com/blog