At 10.30 in the morning,the lights were dimmed and a projector switched on in Court 6 at the Supreme Court to show Aruna Ramchandra Shanbaug in her hospital bed,her shrieks mingling with the devotional songs playing in the background. The 10-minute video is meant to help a Bench of Justices Markandey Katju and Gyansudha Misra decide if withdrawal of medication and food to a bed-ridden Aruna amounts to manslaughter or an act of mercy medically termed passive euthanasia. A nurse with the KEM Hospital in Mumbai,Aruna was raped by a sweeper at the hospital in November 1973. Her assailant had then tried to strangle her. He was later sentenced to seven years in prison for attempt to murder and robbery. We want all to see, Justice Katju announced to the court before the visuals came alive on a white screen specially set up at the front. As the video played out,the judges watched keenly for signs of human life in Aruna. Justice Misra,at one instance,pointed out to her fellow judge how Aruna had tried to scratch her forehead in one of the visuals. The debate on who should decide whether Aruna should live or die began soon after the screening. Pinky Virani,who describes herself as next friend of Aruna and has moved the petition for withdrawal of life support to her,started off by asking the court whether Arunas present status can be said to be a human life at all? She had termed Arunas condition for the past 38 years as a continued vegetative existence. But Attorney General G E Vahanvati,who was invited by the court as the governments top law officer to express his opinion,said a decision is difficult but disagreed with Virani. The right to die should not be confused with the right to die an unnatural death, he said. The court then asked the AG whether others can decide for a person in a permanent vegetative state? Take a hypothetical situation,a person is in a coma after a car accident and kept alive by artificial methods for several weeks. The family cannot afford his treatment,can the son take a decision to end his fathers life? Justice Katju asked Vahanvati. Can he? Are we going to set a principle here that a son can decide because his inheritance or estate may be affected because of his fathers continuing condition. In that case the State has to step in. We cannot go on the basis of financial liability, Vahanvati responded,concluding that withdrawal of food,hydration and medicines to Aruna is cruel,inhuman and intolerable. It was finally left to the nameless nurses and staffers of KEM Hospital to claim Aruna as their own. With every new batch of entrants,the student nurses are introduced to her and they are told she was one of us and she continues to be one of us, the hospitals staff stated in an affidavit. In the four-page affidavit,the hospital staff describe their patient,occupying a single room in Ward number 4,as a child whom they have cared and nurtured in bed for 33 long years. The very idea of withholding food or putting her to sleep by active medication nurses. is extremely difficult for anybody in the hospital to accept. Aruna has probably crossed 60 years and would one day meet her natural end. The doctors,nurses and staff of KEM are determined to take care of her till her last breath by natural process, the affidavit said. Now is not the moment, said a doctor,who had come for the hearing but wished to remain anonymous,as he walked out of the courtroom after the Bench reserved the case for pronouncement of judgment on Monday.
