After 36 yrs of immobility,a fresh hope of death

“The petitioner (Aruna) is kept in this persistent vegetative state by the hospital authorities by feeding her mashed food,which she can hardly digest. She cannot speak,hear or see,there is no element of human life in her body,” the petition said.

Aruna,59,of Karwar district in Karnataka and formerly a nurse with KEM Hospital run by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation,has not woken up from her present state since 1973,when she had been left to die by a sweeper who sexually assaulted her. He tried to strangle her with a dog chain,as a result cutting off air supply to her brain.

In 1974,Sohanlal Bartha Walmiki,her assailant,was held guilty for the “attempt to commit murder and robbery” and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment.

On Wednesday,the apex court Bench noted that mercy killing,or euthanasia,does not have legal sanction in the country when it observed that the “law of the country does not permit a person to die”.

But Aruna’s lawyer,senior advocate Shekar Nalpade,told the court that “Aruna cannot be said to exist in the sense human beings are supposed to live. It is only on account of the mashed food being put into her mouth that there is a façade of life which is totally devoid of any human element”.

The petition sought a direction to the state government and BMC to carry out tests to ascertain the medical condition of the woman. “All these years it was the railing that prevented her from falling off the bed during her several bouts of restlessness,” Virani’s petition said.