ARUNA SHANBAUG: A CASE DENIED, A RIGHT RECOGNISED

What happens when the biggest fight of your life isn’t to live, but rather to die peacefully and with dignity, words that are usually attached to living in this world? But in the decades-long fight for Aruna Shanbaug, it looked quite different. It was a fight to let go, one that our law didn’t provide. What happens when the only way to survive becomes so gruesome that it might be better to die? What if the one enduring that pain or the ones close to that person find it better to relieve that person from so much suffering? What is so interesting in Aruna Shanbaug's case is the legal paradox that is so apparent: how she was not provided the relief, but it was reserved for others, and decades later, in 2026 it was used in the case of Harish Rana, drawing widespread opinions and coverage. Yet this very relief wasn’t provided to the one who started it all.