Who was Aruna Shanbaug, the Karnataka nurse whom CJI Chandrachud cited in Kolkata rape and murder case hearing

The attack on Arun Shanbaug that continues to haunt

An aspirational woman, Aruna Shanbaug, who was from the Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka, was finishing her work when Sohanlal Bhartha Walmiki attacked her, choked her with a dog chain, and raped her in the hospital’s basement. The next morning, a cleaner noticed her lying on the floor. While she suffered serious injuries to her spine in the brutal attack, the strangulation with the dog chain cut off the oxygen supply to her brain, rendering her in a vegetative state for life. She was 24 years old.

Walmiki was convicted of attempted murder and theft, but was not tried for rape under a narrow definition of what constitutes rape. After serving seven years of imprisonment, Walmiki vanished.

Shanbaug remained in a vegetative state for the next 42 years, and died due to pneumonia at the age of 66 in May 2015. For all those years, she was confined to a bed at the very same hospital where she worked and was taken care of by the nurses.

Aruna Shanbaug vs Union of India

Years later, the Aruna Shanbaug case also triggered a debate about mercy killing or euthanasia in India.

In 2009, 36 years after Shanbaug was attacked, Pinki Virani, a journalist and human rights activist filed a plea in the Supreme Court on behalf of the nurse seeking passive euthanasia for her. Virani, who wrote Aruna’s Story: The True Account of a Rape and Its Aftermath, sought to end the suffering that Shanbaug had to endure for decades and with no chance of recovery. However, the staff of K E M Hospital staff opposed the euthanasia plea, and said they were happy to take care of Aruna Shanbaug.

The Supreme Court allowed the petition the next year. In 2011, the Supreme Court directed the setting up of a medical committee to examine Aruna Shanbaug’s condition, and the panel’s report said she was in a permanently vegetative state. Though the Supreme Court turned down Pinki Virani’s plea, it allowed ‘passive euthanasia’ of withdrawing life support to patients who are in a permanently vegetative state.

While refusing to grant permission for the mercy killing of Aruna Shanbaug, the court also laid down a set of tough guidelines under which passive euthanasia could be legalised through a high court-monitored mechanism. As defined by the SC in the Aruna Ramchandra Shanbaug vs Union Of India & Ors, passive euthanasia entails withholding of medical treatment for continuance of life, eg withholding of antibiotics where without giving it a patient is likely to die.

The nurses at the K E M Hospital, who had taken care of Aruna Shanbaug for decades “like their child”, celebrated by cutting a cake.

On May 18, 2015, Aruna Shanbaug passed away at the hospital. After her death, Virani told The Indian Express, “Aruna was the reason passive euthanasia was legalised but she never got the benefit of it. In her death, she brought in a landmark judgment.”

Almost three years after her death, the Supreme Court in a landmark judgment on March 9, 2018, allowed passive euthanasia in the country. A five-judge Constitution bench, headed by the then Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, while recognising “living wills” made by terminally ill patients who are likely to go into a permanent vegetative state, laid down guidelines for passive euthanasia.

The bench, also comprised justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud, and Ashok Bhushan, also laid down rules about who could execute the will and how a nod for passive euthanasia would be granted by the medical board. On that day, Justice Chandrachud said, “Life and death are inseparable. Every moment our bodies undergo change… life is not disconnected from death. Dying is a part of the process of living.”