Rape victim Aruna Shanbaug died after being in coma for 42 years
Aruna Shanbaug suffered brain damage and was in a vegetative state after she was raped and strangled by a hospital worker in 1973. Shanbaug, 67, was taken to the medical intensive care unit (MICU) of the Parel hospital after she developed breathing difficulty.
Mr Pravin Bangar, medical superintendent at Mumbai’s King Edward Memorial Hospital, said Shanbaug had been diagnosed with pneumonia and had been on a life support system for the past few days. Shanbaug’s case sparked a debate over India’s euthanasia laws after a Mumbai lawyer petitioned the courts to stop force-feeding her through a tube so her suffering would not be prolonged.
Shanbaug began working as a junior nurse at KEM in the early 1970s, after moving to the city from the southern Indian state of Karnataka. On Nov. 27, 1973, she was brutally attacked by a hospital sweeper named Sohanlal Bhartia Valmiki, who tied her to a dog chain and sodomized her.
The incident left her in a vegetative state owing to serious brain injuries. For the past 42 years, she had been confined to ward No. 4 of the same hospital. In March 2011, Shanbaug became the face of the debate on euthanasia in India after the country’s Supreme Court rejected a petition filed by the writer Pinki Virani that sought permission for a “mercy killing.”
Virani’s move was opposed by the nurses and doctors at the hospital who had looked after Shanbaug since she was attacked. Her rapist served seven years in prison after being convicted of robbery and attempted murder.
