New Delhi, Dec 17 (IANS) A petition to the apex court seeking its nod to let a rape victim lying comatose in a Mumbai hospital for the last 36 years die without being force-fed, has triggered a debate over legality of euthanasia, with various jurists seeking review of the laws that deem it illegal.
The Supreme Court Wednesday sought the stand of the central and the Maharashtra governments, besides that of the Mumbai King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital on the lawsuit fled by journalist Pinki Virani on behalf of comatose rape victim Aruna Shanbaug, who was a nurse in the hospital.

Shanbaug was admitted to the hospital after being sexually assaulted by a hospital employee in November 1973, said the lawsuit, adding that she is being kept alive by doctors by being fed through a food pipe.

“In a situation where life cannot be prolonged except through miseries and vegetative existence and when the only way to live with dignity is to die in a dignified way, a person has the right to choose to die,” said advocate Prashant Bhushan.

“If such a person, owing to his comatose condition, is not in a situation to ask for death, his near relatives in consultation with a medical board should be allowed to take the decision,” he added, seeking review of the relevant laws.

Senior counsel Kamini Jaiswal too supported Shanbaug’s plea, pointing out that the Supreme Court has described the Right to Life as right to live with human dignity.

“If it’s a painful and torturous life, prolonged by life-saving medical interventions, it is not a life worth living and should be allowed to be ended,” she said.

A bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Justice A.K. Ganguly and Justice B.S. Chauhan heard the lawsuit that urged the hospital be asked to stop Shanbaug’s force-feeding, arguing that keeping her in this persistent vegetative state was violative of her fundamental right to live with dignity guaranteed by the constitution.

Appearing for Virmani, her counsel Shekhar Nafde pleaded that Shanbaug does not have the life of a human being and is lying in a hospital bed like an animal.

She can neither speak, nor hear nor express herself, he said and added she cannot even chew and does not know what the food tastes like.

Nafde said this could not be considered a plea for euthanasia as Shanbaug’s life was worse than an “animal’s existence”.

Nafde’s argument evoked expressions of concerns from the bench for the victim.

Shanbaug, now 59, joined KEM Hospital as a nurse in 1966. She was brutally attacked by ward boy Sohanlal Valmiki in 1973, who sodomised her after strangling her with a dog chain, cutting off oxygen supply to her brain and leaving her blind, paralysed and comatose.

Valmiki was convicted for attempt to murder and for robbing her earrings - but was never tried for rape.