Supreme Court allows passive euthanasia for Harish Rana in historic verdict
32-year-old Harish Rana, who has been in a coma ever since a fall 13 years ago left him with severe brain injuries, has been allowed to die by the Supreme Court. This marks the first-ever case of a court-ordered passive euthanasia in the country.
The verdict, which clarified several aspects of a 2018 Supreme Court judgment that recognised the legality of passive euthanasia, was delivered by an emotional bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and KV Viswanathan.
Today’s verdict will be a landmark judgment since it takes forward the 2018 Supreme Court guidelines on passive euthanasia.
The Harish Rana judgment clarifies aspects related to how passive euthanasia should be applied in cases where a patient’s life is being supported by feeding tubes – something that had not been clearly defined in the previous judgment.
The Harish Rana case is unique in the sense that while medical opinion concurred that his condition was irreversible, the fact that his life was being supported by food supplied via medical tubes was not an aspect covered under the 2018 guidelines.
As a result, the mechanism provided under the earlier judgment – withdrawal of life support such as a ventilator – created a hurdle for passive euthanasia to be carried out in Rana’s case at the hospital level.
This is what had forced Harish Rana’s parents to move the courts. Their plea finally reached the Supreme Court, which in its order today allowed the withdrawal of medical treatment to Harish Rana in a hospital setting, effectively allowing the 32-year-old to die with dignity.