Indian nurse (Aruna Shanbaug) dies after 42 years in coma
Aruna Shanbaug
suffered brain damage and had been in a vegetative state in a Mumbai
hospital since being strangled with a dog chain and sexually assaulted
by a hospital worker in 1973.
The
66-year-old Shanbaug had suffered a bout of pneumonia in recent days
and was on a ventilator, officials at King Edward Hospital in Mumbai
told the Press Trust of India news agency.
Shanbaug
was attacked by a ward boy in the basement of the hospital where she
was discovered 11 hours later, blind and suffering from a severe brain
stem injury.
Left bedridden, she spent more than four decades being cared for by a team of doctors and nurses at the hospital.
Her attacker was freed after a seven-year jail sentence.
"Her actual death happened in
1973 (the date of the attack). Now what has happened is her legal
death," her friend and journalist Pinki Virani told Zee News TV channel.
"Our Aruna has given our country a big thing in the form of a law on passive euthanasia," Virani said.
Shanbaug's
plight became a focal point of debate on euthanasia in India after
Virani appealed to India's top court in 1999 to allow her to die with
dignity.
Indian laws do not permit euthanasia or self-starvation to the point of death.
But
in 2011 the Supreme Court decided that life support could be legally
removed for some terminally ill patients in a landmark ruling that
allowed "passive euthanasia" for the first time.
The
court said withdrawing life support could be allowed in exceptional
circumstances, provided the request was from family and supervised by
doctors and the courts.
The
supervision was required to prevent "unscrupulous" family members
attempting to kill off wealthy relatives, the Supreme Court had said.
The
court however rejected Virani's request to stop Shanbaug being
force-fed on the grounds that she was not legally eligible to make the
demand on Shanbaug's behalf.
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