Defining moment for law on passive euthanasia in India

Harish Rana was once a 18-year-old engineering student with the easy confidence of youth and the promise of a long life ahead.

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A tragic fall from the fourth floor of a building changed everything. Doctors managed to save his life, but not his brain. For the past 13 years, Harish has remained trapped in a body that breathes but does not live. The lives of his parents have been consumed by an exhausting cycle of caregiving, emotional anguish, financial burden and helplessness. This forced his family, and then the courts, to confront one of the most difficult ethical questions of modern medicine: ‘Are we extending his life or merely postponing his inevitable death? What does dignity demand?The Supreme Court of India has already recognised the right to die with dignity in the landmark Common Cause judgment. Yet, the Delhi High Court rejected Harish’s parents’ petition to allow him to pass away. The Court observed that earlier rulings on passive euthanasia largely concerned patients who were kept alive through life-support systems such as ventilators, dialysis or heart-lung machines. Harish, however, was not dependent on such equipment.

The Supreme Court directed the constitution of two independent medical boards to examine his condition. Both boards concluded unequivocally that there was no chance of meaningful neurological recovery.

Still, a difficult legal question remained unresolved. Withdrawal of medical support such as a ventilator is one thing; withholding artificial feeding is another. Would withholding feeding amount to active euthanasia? If so, it would be illegal in India.