India's top court upholds passive euthanasia with guidelines

terminally ill individuals are allowed to draft a "living will" to opt against life support

India's Supreme Court ruled on Friday that individuals had a right to die with dignity, allowing passive euthanasia with guidelines in a landmark verdict.

The top court also permitted individuals to draft a "living
will" specifying that they not be put on life support if they
slip into an incurable coma.

The five-judge Constitution bench headed by the Chief
Justice of India said, "human beings have a right to die with
dignity".



Passive euthanasia will be applicable to only a
terminally ill person with no hope for recovery, the court said.

In 2015, the death of a 66-year-old nurse Aruna Shanbaug,
who was sexually assaulted and left in a vegetative state for
more than 40 years, had sparked a national debate over the
legalisation of euthanasia.



Indian publication, the National reports that Shanbaug was on duty at the King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital in Mumbai in 1973 when a janitor raped and then strangled her with a length of chain, leaving her for dead.

Although Shanbaug survived, the strangulation had cut off oxygen to her brain, causing permanent damage and rendering her blind. She remained in a vegetative state for 42 years, being fed mashed food by her former colleagues at the hospital.

Over the past six days, Shanbaug developed pneumonia, and although she was treated in the hospital’s intensive care unit, she could not fight off the infection.

At the time of the crime, when it still seemed possible Shanbaug might recover, the hospital’s administrators tried to conceal the fact she was raped, owing to the stigma surrounding sexual assault victims.

Instead, they pressed charges of robbery and attempted murder against the janitor, Sohanlal Walmiki.