00:00Imagine being kept alive by medical tubes for more than 13 years.
00:05No awareness, no ability to communicate, no hope of recovery.
00:09That is what 31-year-old Harish Rana's life looked like.
00:13For families, it is heartbreaking.
00:15For doctors, it raises an ethical question.
00:18Should life support continue indefinitely or should nature be allowed to take its course?
00:28And that is the question that the Supreme Court of India has confronted in the case of Harish Rana v.
00:33Union of India.
00:34For the first time, the court has allowed a family to withdraw certain life-sustaining treatment from a patient in
00:41a permanently vegetative state.
00:43But the judgment is not just about one man.
00:47It clarifies how India should approach end-of-life medical decisions.
00:51Harish Rana had been in a permanent vegetative state since 2013.
00:55For years, he had been kept alive through clinically administered nutrition and hydration, or the canned tubes.
01:02Hydration delivered through medical tubes.
01:05In 2024, his family approached the Delhi High Court seeking permission to remove these tubes.
01:10The High Court refused, saying this would amount to actively ending life and cannot be permitted.
01:16The Supreme Court of India has taken a different view.
01:19The court has ruled that can is a form of medical treatment because it requires medical protocols, surgical procedures and
01:26continuous supervision.
01:28And like other medical treatments, it can legally be withdrawn in certain circumstances.
01:34The Supreme Court bench of Justices J.B. Pardewala and K.B. Vishwanath also acknowledged the extraordinary devotion of Harish's
01:41family, who cared for him for more than a decade.
01:44The judges have said that this kind of case lies at the intersection of love, loss, medicine and mercy.
01:51The court has observed that survival is not always the same as living.
01:55Legally, Indian law does not allow active euthanasia.
01:59No injections or any actions that can actively cause death.
02:02But it does permit passive euthanasia.
02:05That means withdrawing medical treatment when it only prolongs life artificially and recovery is impossible.
02:12This principle was first recognized in the Arunash Anwar case and later expanded in the Common Cause Judgment of 2018.
02:19The best interest of the patient is the first and most important consideration.
02:24Two independent medical boards must review such cases and only if both agree that treatment is medically futile and not
02:32in the patient's best interest, can it be withdrawn.
02:35Even then, doctors must ensure palliative care so that the patient remains comfortable and pain-free till death.
02:42The court has also asked governments to create district-level panels of doctors for such decisions as secondary medical boards
02:48and urged the parliament to consider a comprehensive law on passive euthanasia.
