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Nurses at Mumbai’s KEM Hospital hail verdict
MUMBAI - Nurses at the state-owned KEM Hospital here cheered on Monday after the Supreme Court rejected a plea by an author, seeking the mercy killing of Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse at the hospital, who has been in coma for 37 years.
A large number of staff members at the hospital celebrated the judgement, with many reiterating that they would continue to take care of the comatose nurse, who has been in coma since 1973. The apex court, however, came out with a landmark judgement, legalising for the first time, passive euthanasia in India.
According to the apex court, Pinki Virani, a journalist and author of a book on Aruna, could not demand that the hospital staff stop force-feeding the ailing nurse.
However, the doctors and nurses at the hospital could approach the courts if they wanted to withdraw life support to the nurse. While declaring ‘active’ euthanasia, which involves injecting of lethal medication to end a life, as illegal, the court ruled that ‘passive’ euthanasia – meaning the withdrawal of life support system – under medical supervision was permissible.
Aruna was sexually assaulted by a sweeper in the nurses’ changing room at the hospital in November 1973, months before she was to marry a colleague. The rapist (who was arrested later and charged for assault and attempted murder; he served his seven-year jail sentence and is free, but untraced, now) strangled her with a chain, resulting in her losing consciousness. She has been comatose since then; in the initial years, she used to scream, but she has been in a vegetable state for several years now.
After the death of her parents, the staff at the hospital have been feeding her and attending to her needs. Pinki Virani wrote a book on her and in 1999 filed a plea in the Supreme Court, seeking an end to the force-feeding of Aruna. But the nurses at the hospital are vehemently opposed to the move. On Monday, some of them accused the author of dragging the case to court for mere publicity.
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