India’s Supreme Court today authorised the withdrawal of life support from a 32-year-old man who had been in a persistent vegetative state for 13 years, marking the first legally permitted case of passive euthanasia in the country.
The decision responded to a petition filed by the father of patient Harish Rana, supported by two medical boards that concluded his condition was irreversible and that treatment was only prolonging his biological existence with no possibility of recovery.
According to a prior Supreme Court order consulted by the EFE news agency, the judges requested a meeting with Harish Rana’s family before taking a final decision on withdrawing life support, in order to “ensure the dignity” of the patient.
The Supreme Court urged the central government to consider passing specific legislation in parliament to regulate this practice.
Rana suffered severe brain injuries in 2013 after falling from the fourth floor of a building while living in student accommodation. He has since remained in a vegetative state, dependent on medical assistance to breathe and eat.
The Supreme Court’s decision comes more than a decade after the case that changed the course of euthanasia debate in India: that of nurse Aruna Shanbaug, who was left in a vegetative state in 1973 after being raped and strangled with a chain by a hospital worker at KEM Hospital in Mumbai, where she worked.
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The attack caused severe brain damage and left her bedridden in the same hospital for decades. Her case reached the Supreme Court in 2011, when an activist sought authorisation to suspend the treatments keeping her alive — but the court rejected the request, ruling that it had not been brought by family members or responsible medical professionals. 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 consists of suspending or not initiating treatments that keep a patient artificially alive, as distinct from active euthanasia, which involves administering substances to cause death.
