India mourns Aruna Shanbaug

 

Aruna Shanbaug, who became the face of India’s euthanasia debate after being in a vegetative state for around 42 years following her brutal rape in 1973, breathed her last in Mumbai’s King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital on Monday May 18,2015

Aruna Shanbaug whose case shaped the country’s laws on life-support treatment, suffered brain damage after she was sexually assaulted and strangled by ward boy Sohanlal Bharta Valmiki at the KEM hospital where she had worked. 

Aruna Shanbaug suffered grave injuries to her spine, while the stifling cut off the oxygen supply to her brain during the assault, condemning her to a vegetative state for life. 

Sohanlal was caught and convicted. He served two concurrent seven-year sentences for assault and robbery, but not for sexual assault and the alleged offence of unnatural sex. 

Aruna’s demise also brought to an end the painstaking and selfless service rendered by the fellow nurses of KEM Hospital, who never gave up hope. She probably was one of the longest living comatose patients. 

Aruna was moved to the intensive care unit of the hospital on May 15 after she had suffered a serious bout of pneumonia last week. Since she had suffered a similar ailment in 2013, the hospital staff hoped that she would be fine soon. 

The hospital staff on Monday ensured that Aruna was decked out in her best. They put ‘bindi’ on her forehead and lots of garlands and flowers on her body, which was kept at the KEM hospital during the day for the public to pay their last respects. 

Her body was then taken to the Bhoiwada crematorium, where Hospital Dean Dr. Avinash Supe performed the last rites and lit the pyre. 

Aruna would have turned 68 years old on June 1. Doctors and hospital staff celebrated Aruna’s birthday every year without fail. 

The Supreme Court considered her case in 2011 after her biographer and journalist Pinki Virani filed a petition, requesting judges to order the hospital to stop feeding her so that she “can die peacefully”

On January 24, 2011, the SC set up a medical panel to examine her. The committee concluded that Aruna met most of the criteria of being in a permanently vegetative state. 

While turning down the plea of mercy killing on March 7, 2011, the Supreme Court allowed passive euthanasia, via withdrawing life support from patients in permanently vegetative state (PVS). It rejected active euthanasia of ending life through the administration of lethal substances. 

Refusing the mercy killing of Aruna, the court had laid a set of guidelines, under which passive euthanasia can be legalised through a high court-monitored system