Writer urges Supreme Court to let comatose nurse die

A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking to allow nurse Aruna Shanbhag, who was raped violently by a sweeper in Mumbai’s King Edward Memorial Hospital 36 years ago and has been in a coma ever since, to die.

The court issued notices to the Centre and the state government on the petition, observing that “under the law of the country, we cannot allow a person to die”.
A bench headed by chief justice KG Balakrishnan expressed concern when lawyer Shekhar Nafde, appearing for petitioner Pinki Virani, suggested that Shanbhag not be fed.

Shanbhag, now 59, had joined KEM Hospital as a nurse in 1966. She was raped by a sweeper in 1973 and went into a coma. Since then she has been lying in a ward at the hospital.

Initially, the justices were hesitant to entertain the petition moved on Shanbhag’s behalf by writer Virani, but later they issued the notices.

Nafde explained that this could not be considered a plea for euthanasia. “This is no human right,” he said. “Her life is worse than animal existence.”

The counsel also sought a direction to the state government and the municipal corporation to carry out tests to ascertain Shanbhag’s medical condition.