Kumar Bahukhandi
A limited number of countries allow assisted dying too, but under very strict conditions to be arrived at only after a diagnosis of terminal illness and unbearable suffering.
The Supreme Court’s empathetic ruling to allow passive euthanasia to a patient who had been in a vegetative state for 12 years could not have been arrived at easily. The two-judge bench may have thought long and hard about the right of the kin of the patient to take the call on whether to pull the plug on a loved one they had cared for over so many years even if there was only the faintest hope that the 32-year-old could ever regain his faculties and live normally again.
This is the first verdict of its kind in India that has formalised the practice of passive euthanasia.
A limited number of countries allow assisted dying too, but under very strict conditions to be arrived at only after a diagnosis of terminal illness and unbearable suffering. A fear of playing God to have to rule in such extreme situations could well be the stumbling block that judges may have had to grapple with, though many of their colleagues had ruled that the right to die with dignity was subsumed in the right to live in earlier judgments.
The dilemma of Harish Rana’s kin was stretched out for years, but there are many in the medical profession who undergo an ethical dilemma when the end-of-life syndrome affects patients, mostly of the middle class, and whose kin would like the freedom to take their loved ones off a ventilator, simply because they cannot afford the intensive care costs. Doctors generally demur because they know the prohibitive cost of stretching lives when it has arrived near enough to the end point, often because age has caught up with people and their biological existence.
Nations which have had to deal with this over the years have come to accept passive euthanasia, which is to do with the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, as the preferred soft option whereas allowing assisted dying is far more complex legally, ethically and culturally too.
What the courts may face sooner rather than later is there may be any number of applications from kin of vulnerable populations who live with mental illnesses, extreme disabilities, etc.
Considering that religions tend to believe in “doing no harm”, even passive euthanasia is a difficult enough decision. The court’s empathy is to be appreciated.
