New Delhi, March 07: The Supreme Court will deliver its verdict in Nurse Aruna Shanbaug’s mercy killing petition on Monday. She has been lying in a “persistent vegetative state” in Mumbai’s King Edward Memorial Hospital for over 37 years.
A bench of Justice Markandey Katju and Justice Gyan Sudha Misra, while deciding a petition seeking the nurse’s mercy killing, may either lay down rules for passive euthanasia to guard against abuse or reject the plea to remove the life support system of comatose Aruna Shanbaug (62), a rape victim, to end her life.
As the victim can’t see or speak properly ,activist Pinki Virani filed a petition that keeping her alive violates her right to live with dignity.
In the last hearing, the court was told that if there was unanimity among immediate relatives and doctors to put a comatose patient to permanent sleep, then there should be no difficulty.
The judges expressed apprehension that mercy killing may be open to abuse as relatives and doctors, for financial gains, may put a patient to sleep even though he or she may not be terminally ill.
The government forcefully argued against a petition in the apex court that seeks mercy killing for Aruna Shanbaug nurse.Making his case, Attorney General G.E. Vahanvati sought to draw a distinction between the right to choose to terminate one’s life and the right to terminate one’s life at the instance of others.
The judges referred to the British practice of judicial declaration before a terminally ill patient can be put to sleep.
Dr Roop Gurshani and Dr Nilesh Shah appointed by Supreme court examined Aruna and submitted a report on February 17, along with a CD.
Aruna Shanbhag, a nurse from Haldipur, Shimoga, Karnataka, was assaulted by a Sohanlal Bhartha Walmiki, a ward boy at Mumbai’s King Edward Memorial Hospital in 1973.
On the night of November 27, 1973 Walmiki attacked her, while she was changing clothes in the hospital basement for leaving her shift.
He choked her with a dog chain and sodomized her.The chain around her neck had cut off oxygen supply to her brain, damaging sight, memory and normal movement.
——–Agencies