New Delhi, Mar 12 (PTI) The Supreme Court verdict allowing passive euthanasia for Harish Rana, in a coma for 12 years, is a gift from Aruna Shanbaug “who was never treated like a human”, says journalist-activist Pinki Virani who led the ‘die with dignity’ campaign for the Mumbai nurse in 2011.
Shanbaug remained bedridden in a vegetative state in Mumbai’s KEM hospital for 42 years after a brutal sexual assault in November 1973. She died of pneumonia in 2015.
Eleven years later, the Supreme Court on Wednesday in a landmark first allowed passive euthanasia for 32-year-old Ghaziabad man Rana, who has been in a coma since suffering head injuries after a fall in 2013. It directed AIIMS-Delhi to ensure that life support is withdrawn with a tailored plan so that dignity is maintained.
“All of this has allowed us to make us feel more human. I’m finally constitutionally being recognised by my own country and its judges, its government, as being mature enough to take a sensible decision if it’s in the interest of the patient,” Virani, now based in Canada, told PTI Videos.
“I, as an Indian, have been given a tool which is for me to examine whether I need to use it with compassion or not. It’s giving me a chance to be human. And it’s a gift from Aruna Shanbaug who was never treated like a human,” Virani added.
Virani had filed a petition in the apex court in 2009 on behalf of Shanbaug, pleading for passive euthanasia. In 2011, the court rejected her petition while also legalising passive euthanasia under strict guidelines.
According to Virani, now that the court has listened to Rana’s family’s plea, “doctors or the nurses should not play god and respect his rights”.
“If the legalities are in place, and if the written is in place, with the patient’s express wishes, I would request the doctors to not play god, because god has left the chat. The person is already dead, what remains is him being legally dead, everything else is gone.
“So I would really request doctors and nurses to not play god, as they did in the case of Aruna Shanbaug… Please just give him what he needs, and which by his right, he is now entitled,” she said.
AIIMS spokesperson Dr Rima Dada said the hospital will set up a committee to decide on how to implement the court’s directive. Virani explained further that the process involves gradually tapering down the patient’s feed along with administering pain management medicines.
“All the countries where medically-assisted dying is allowed, the process is different. It’s quite simple in India….It will take a maximum of 15 days before he will have eternal peace,” she said.
“It’s all quite apparent as to how each additional step taken has been in the benefit of human dignity. In the context of passive euthanasia, in the context of advanced medical directives, every step went forward, guided by the Supreme Court, assisted by the government of India,” Virani added.
After Shanbaug’s case in 2011, subsequent petitions on the right to die with dignity have further simplified the process for passive euthanasia.
Three years after Shanbaug’s death in 2018, the apex court in the Common Cause v Union of India recognised the “right to die with dignity” as a fundamental right under Article 21. It legalised passive euthanasia and “living wills”, or “Advance Medical Directive” and laid down strict procedures for implementing these directives.
On January 24, 2023, a five-judge Constitution bench modified the 2018 guidelines to ease the process of granting passive euthanasia to terminally ill patients. A primary and a secondary medical board will have to be formed for an expert opinion on the withdrawal of artificial life support for a patient in a vegetative state, the guidelines stated.
The guidelines required that the decision to withdraw life support could only be taken by parents, spouse, other close relatives of the patient, or in their absence the “next friend”, before needing the court’s approval.
While rejecting Virani’s plea, the Supreme Court in 2011 argued that Virani was neither the next of kin nor a close friend and the staff of the KEM Hospital, which treated Shanbaug with familial care, had opposed the petition for euthanasia to their former colleague.
“Passive euthanasia is when death has already set in. No doctor, no science, no god can fix it for you. So then your choice is you either give the patient dignity and everybody around the patient suffers less guilt or you become stone cold and heartless. But in the case of Aruna, it wasn’t allowed because they didn’t want to taper her feed,” she said.
“They said things like ‘we’ll starve her to death, how dare Pinky Virani say she should be starved to death’. All the cultural stuff came in,” she added.
Hearing the Rana family’s writ petition, the top court had earlier expressed its desire to meet the parents. It examined a report on Rana’s medical history filed by a secondary medical board of doctors from AIIMS-Delhi and remarked that it was a “sad” report.
The primary medical board, upon examining the patient’s condition, had stressed that there was negligible chance of his recovery.
“What they tried to convey, in their own way, was that the medical treatment imparted over a period of almost two years be discontinued and nature be allowed to take its own course.
“According to them, if the medical treatment is not making any difference, there is no point in continuing with such treatment and making Harish suffer for no good reason. They believe that Harish is suffering like anything, and he should be relieved of all further pain and suffering,” the bench noted in its order. PTI MAH MIN MIN MIN
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