Thaindian News

New Delhi, March 7 (IANS) Even as the Supreme Court ruled Monday that Aruna Shanbaug will live and would not be put to passive euthanasia, the question regarding active and passive euthanasia kept surfacing in the corridors of the apex court.

Shanbaug, former nurse at the Mumbai’s King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital, has been in a coma ever since she was brutally raped by a hospital sweeper 37 years ago.

The Supreme Court Monday rejected the petition by Pinki Virani, Shanbaug’s friend and supporter, seeking its directions to put her (Shanbaug) to passive euthanasia.

Active euthanasia is a state where a patient is given a lethal injection, while passive euthanasia involves withdrawing life support systems from a patient.

The judgment noted “active euthanasia entails the use of lethal substances or forces to kill a person, e.g. lethal injection given to a person with terminal cancer who is in terrible agony.”

“Active euthanasia”, the judgment said, “is taking specific steps to cause the patient’s death, such as injecting patient with some lethal substance, e.g. sodium pentothal, which causes a person’s deep sleep in a few seconds, and the person instantaneously and painlessly dies in deep sleep.”

“The difference between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ euthanasia is that in active euthanasia, something is done to end a patient’s life while in passive euthanasia, something is not done that would have preserved the patient’s life,” the court observed.

The court said that in “passive euthanasia the doctors are not actively killing any one, they are simply not saving him”.

“Passive euthanasia entails withholding of antibiotics, where, without giving it, a patient is likely to die, or removing the heart-lung machine (ventilator) from a patient in coma,” added the judgement.

The court also said “the general legal position all over the world seems to be that while active euthanasia is illegal unless there is legislation permitting it, passive euthanasia is legal even without legislation, provided certain conditions and safeguards are followed.”

In India, the judgment said, active euthanasia is illegal and comes under section 302 of Indian Penal Code. Physician-assisted suicide is a crime under section 306 IPC (abetment to suicide).

Virani’s plea said that Shanbaug “is already dead and hence by not feeding her any more we shall not be killing her”.

The court said that Shanbaug was in PVS (persistent vegetative state), which was different from the state of brain-dead, which is irreversible.

The judgment further read: “Even when a person (patient) is incapable of any response, but is able to sustain respiration and circulation, he cannot be said to be dead. The mere mechanical act of breathing thus would enable him or her to be ‘alive’”.