New Delhi, Mar 11 (EFE).- India’s Supreme Court of India on Wednesday authorized the withdrawal of life support for a 32-year-old man who has been in a permanent vegetative state for 13 years following an accident, marking the first time the country’s legal framework allowing passive euthanasia has been applied in practice.
The decision followed a petition filed by the patient’s father, Harish Rana, and was backed by two medical boards that concluded the man’s condition was irreversible and that continued treatment merely prolonged his biological existence with no prospect of recovery.
According to an earlier court order reviewed by EFE, the judges requested a meeting with Rana’s family before making a final decision on withdrawing the systems keeping him alive in order to “ensure the patient’s dignity.”
In approving the case, the country’s top court urged the central government to consider enacting specific legislation to regulate the practice. In India, passive euthanasia is currently governed only by Supreme Court guidelines rather than by a law passed by Parliament.
Rana suffered severe brain injuries in 2013 after falling from the fourth floor of a building while living in a student residence. He has since remained in a vegetative state, dependent on medical assistance for breathing and nutrition.
The ruling comes more than a decade after the case that reshaped the euthanasia debate in India, that of nurse Aruna Shanbaug. Shanbaug was left in a vegetative state in 1973 after being raped and strangled with a chain by a hospital worker at Mumbai’s KEM Hospital, where she was employed.
The attack caused extensive brain damage and left her bedridden in the same hospital for decades.
Her case reached the Supreme Court in 2011, when an activist sought permission to withdraw the life-sustaining treatment keeping her alive. The court rejected the request, ruling that it had not been filed by family members or directly responsible medical authorities.
Shanbaug died in 2015 from pneumonia after more than four decades in a vegetative state. Her attacker served seven years in prison for attempted murder and robbery but was never convicted of rape.
Passive euthanasia involves withdrawing or not initiating treatments that artificially sustain a patient’s life, unlike active euthanasia, which entails administering substances to cause death. EFE
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