Indian nurse who spent 42 years in coma following brutal rape passes away in hospital
Aruna Shanbaug’s plight became a focal point for the debate about euthanasia in India.
A nurse died on Monday after 42 years in a coma following a brutal rape, in a case that led India to ease some restrictions on euthanasia.
Aruna Shanbaug suffered brain damage and had been in a vegetative state in a Mumbai hospital since being strangled with a dog chain and sexually assaulted by a hospital worker in 1973.
The 66-year-old Shanbaug had suffered a bout of pneumonia in recent days and was on a ventilator, officials at King Edward Hospital in Mumbai said.
Shanbaug was attacked by a ward boy in the basement of the hospital where she was discovered 11 hours later, blind and suffering from a severe brain stem injury.
Left bedridden, she spent more than four decades being cared for by a team of doctors and nurses at the hospital.
Her attacker was freed after a seven-year jail sentence.
“Her actual death happened in 1973 [the date of the attack]. Now what has happened is her legal death,” her friend and journalist Pinki Virani told Zee News TV channel.