Aruna Shanbaug, a former nurse, has been brain dead and paralysed for the last 36 years after she was raped in November 1973 in Bombay . Writer and her well wisher Pinki Virani, has approached the Supreme Court of India seeking respite for her and has appealed that Aruna be allowed to die.
According to Experts,when a person carries out an act of euthanasia, he brings about the death of another person because he believes the latter’s present existence is so bad that she would be better off dead, or believes that unless he intervenes and ends her life, it will become so bad that she would be better off dead . To deny people the choice of death by active euthanasia is to force them to do something that is against their will and may well prolong their suffering, and therefore lose human dignity and decency. These are the arguments about euthanasia.
Those against euthanasia claim that patients are often too affected by their illness to make adequate decisions about their future.The New Jersey Supreme Court (USA) rules in 1976 that 21 year old Karen Quinlan can be detached from her respirator. According to experts,the Quinlan case becomes a legal landmark, drawing national and international attention to end-of-life issues. In 2004,K. Venkatesh died in a hospital in India. He was severely ill with muscular distrophy,and had requested an assisted suicide. He was denied, but he died from his disease. In April 2002, the Dutch Parliament legalised it making the Netherlands the only country in the world to legalise Euthanasia.
Dr. Jack Kevorkian who claimed that he had helped more than 130 people die since 1990 .He was known as Dr. Death. In April 1999,he was awarded 10-25 year prison sentence for murder under the law of State of Michigan (USA). In 2001 the Patna High Court in India dismissed Tarakeshwar Chandravanshi’s plea seeking mercy killing for his 25-year-old wife Kanchan, who had been suffering for over a year. In the same year,the Kerala High Court rejected the plea of BK Pillai, who had a uncurable illness, to die. But people still practise euthanasia in India for their near and dear one.