New Delhi: Withdrawal or withholding artificial life support would not amount to an act of killing, the Centre has told the Supreme Court, supporting a 31-year-old man’s passive euthanasia, requested by his parents.
“There exists a clear, unequivocal and well-considered view of the parents of the petitioner, who are also the primary caregivers, arrived at after informed interaction and deliberation,” read the Centre’s submission to the court Thursday.
Harish Rana (31) has been on life support for the last 13 years after a catastrophic brain injury on 20 August 2013.
Post-2024, this is the second time that his parents have approached the top court with a passive euthanasia plea. It was filed in November last year.
Rana’s case is the first in the top court, requesting implementation of its 2018 Common Cause ruling, which created a strict framework for passive euthanasia, Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhatti said in court Thursday.
On the patient’s medical status, the Centre said that he was in an irreversible, permanent state. and showed no chance of improvement, rendering the continued treatment futile.
Rana has been on long-term artificial nutrition and hydration since he fell from the fourth floor of his PG hostel in Punjab University, where he was pursuing an engineering course, back in 2013.
The parents, earlier in 2024, requested the Delhi High Court to constitute a medical board to examine whether it would be possible to withdraw their son’s life-support system, but the high court declined. The Supreme Court, at the time, did not entertain their appeal either, but gave them the liberty to approach the court again later.
After Thursday’s hearing, the two-judge bench of justices J.B. Pardiwala and K.V. Viswanathan reserved its verdict. Striking a note of caution, it said, “These are very delicate issues. We decide matters every day, but who are we to decide about someone’s life? We are mortals.”
The Centre’s submissions
The Centre’s submissions in court reflected the legal and medical positions on passive euthanasia.
In its submission, the Centre relied heavily on two Supreme Court rulings, including the 2018 Common Clause judgment, that prepared the ethical and constitutional foundation for passive euthanasia. The note also hinged on an opinion rendered by two medical boards—set up on the top court’s directions in December 2025.
The 2018 Common Clause judgment placed a particular emphasis on compassion, dignity, and medical futility during considerations over patients in an irreversible permanent vegetative state. Through that order, the court permitted the drafting of living wills and laid down extensive, albeit cumbersome, guidelines to assist passive euthanasia. It created a strict framework for the assisted end-of-life process.
Later in 2023, on an application by the Indian Society for Critical Care Medicine, the top court eased the steps for granting passive euthanasia to terminally ill patients.
The Centre’s note to the court highlighted the legal position on passive euthanasia, permitting the withdrawal of medical intervention that no longer served any therapeutic purpose and merely prolonged the dying process.
It also dealt with the long-drawn argument over medical ethics and the risk that passive euthanasia could pose to medical practitioners by distinguishing between an unlawful act causing someone’s death and the lawful withdrawal of an artificial, futile medical treatment.
Drawing support from the judicial precedents, the Centre’s note submitted that the removal of artificial feeding mechanisms did not amount to causing death. Instead, it constituted cessation of an artificial medical intervention, where death was due to an underlying, irreversible condition of the patient. The support system did not have a life-sustaining function independent of the medical regime, the note added.
The patient ultimately succumbed to the natural consequences of the underlying fatal condition, not due to any positive act of the physician, the Centre further stressed. The withdrawal of an assisted system would mean cessation of a medical intervention, not commissioning of a life-terminating act in cases where the patient was in a completely irreversible vegetative state.
Rana’s case, according to the Centre, is covered within the legal jurisprudence on passive euthanasia, since his medical reports and assessments have established that there is no possibility of improvement or repair of his neurological condition.
Emphasising the right to die with dignity principle, the Centre stated that Rana’s caregivers, therefore, have exhibited a clear and well-considered decision to let him die with dignity.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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