Harish Rana, the first person in India to receive court permission for passive euthanasia, died on Tuesday at AIIMS-Delhi. He was 31.
Rana had been in a coma since 2013, when he fell from a fourth-floor balcony as a BTech student at Panjab University and suffered severe head injuries. He had been on artificial nutrition support and occasional oxygen ever since.
On March 14, he was moved from his Ghaziabad home to the palliative care unit at Dr BR Ambedkar Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital at AIIMS. Just three days earlier, on March 11, the Supreme Court had cleared the way in a landmark ruling the first time passive euthanasia was permitted for an individual in India. His nutritional support was gradually withdrawn after admission.
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The court directed AIIMS to execute the withdrawal through a structured plan designed to preserve Rana’s dignity. A dedicated medical team was assembled under Dr Seema Mishra, professor and head of the department of anaesthesia and palliative medicine. The team drew from neurosurgery, onco-anaesthesia and palliative medicine, and psychiatry the first such team constituted in India for this purpose.