Aruna Shanbaug v. Union of India

In one line

The Supreme Court refused to let Aruna Shanbaug's feeding be stopped, because the people who had actually cared for her did not want it, and in the same judgment it permitted passive euthanasia in India for the first time and laid down the procedure until Parliament legislated.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the Supreme Court dismissed the petition on the facts, holding that the staff of the King Edward Memorial Hospital and not the petitioner were Aruna Shanbaug's next friend and that they did not wish life support to be withdrawn; it distinguished active euthanasia, the taking of positive steps to end life, which remains a crime, from passive euthanasia, the withholding or withdrawal of treatment necessary to continue life; it held that passive euthanasia should be permitted in India in certain situations; and, expressly following the technique used in Vishaka, it laid down the law on the subject, to continue until Parliament made a law, requiring the decision to be taken bona fide in the patient's best interests by the parents, spouse, other close relatives, a next friend or the treating doctors, and to be approved by the High Court in its parens patriae jurisdiction.

The vocabulary, first

Four terms have to be defined before the case can be discussed, and an answer that defines them earns marks that an answer plunging into the facts does not.

Euthanasia means bringing about the death of a person suffering from an incurable condition, on the footing that death is preferable to continued suffering. The word is Greek for a good death.

Active euthanasia means a positive act that causes death, such as administering a lethal injection.

Passive euthanasia means withholding or withdrawing treatment that is necessary for the continuance of life, such as taking a patient off a ventilator or discontinuing artificial feeding.

Voluntary and non-voluntary. Euthanasia is voluntary where the patient is capable of deciding and consents to it; it is non-voluntary where the patient is not in a position to decide, which is the situation of a patient in a persistent vegetative state.

Persistent vegetative state means a condition in which a patient has lost cognitive function and awareness while retaining certain reflexes and, ordinarily, the ability to breathe.

The facts

Facts. Aruna Ramchandra Shanbaug v. Union of India, AIR 2011 SC 1290. Aruna Shanbaug was a nurse at the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Bombay. In 1973 she was assaulted by a sweeper of the hospital, who wrapped a dog chain around her neck, and the strangulation cut off the supply of oxygen to her brain. She survived in a persistent vegetative state, and was cared for by the nursing staff of the hospital for the next thirty seven years.