Aruna Shanbaug Lived, So Harish Rana Could Die: A Note On Harish Rana V. Union Of India
- IJLLR Journal
- May 4
- 2 min read
Nilesh Sharma, LL.B., Campus Law Centre, University of Delhi
I. Introduction
The story of passive euthanasia in India has been running through three significant cases across fifteen years. I first read about Aruna Shanbaug back in 2022, when I was preparing for my law entrance exams, and it stuck with me. In Aruna Shanbaug v. Union of India2, the Supreme Court first recognised that passive euthanasia could be constitutionally permissible, although it did not grant relief to Shanbaug herself, a nurse who had been in a persistent vegetative state for almost forty-two years due to a brutal assault upon her. Shanbaug died of pneumonia in 2015. The judgment that bore her name, however, outlived her; the case closed, but what it stood for did not. The judgment established the concept that Article 21 which provides right to life, also encompasses the right to die with dignity, and that withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from a patient in a permanent vegetative state is not the same as causing death. In 2018, Common Cause v. Union of India3, built the procedural architecture on that foundation, recognising Advance Medical Directives, laying down guidelines for medical boards, and affirming that the right to die with dignity extended beyond cases of terminal illness to those in a persistent vegetative state. Then, on March 11, 2026, the Supreme Court applied that architecture for the first time in Harish Rana v. Union of India, permitting the withdrawal of Clinically Assisted Nutrition and Hydration (CANH) from a 32-year-old man who had been in a Permanent Vegetative State for over thirteen years following a catastrophic brain injury suffered due to falling from his hostel’s window. To paint a clearer picture, I would like to differentiate between Active and Passive Euthanasia, as to what I understood after reading the Harish Rana Judgment.
