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Days aft the Supreme Court granted withdrawal of aesculapian treatment in his case, affirming “the close to die with dignity”, 31-year-old Harish Rana died at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, on Tuesday (March 24, 2026) after much than 13 years in coma, sources said.
Since August 2013, Mr. Rana had been connected beingness enactment aft helium fell from a gathering and sustained terrible caput injuries when he was a B. Tech student astatine Panjab University.
He was shifted from his Ghaziabad location to the palliative attraction portion astatine Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital at AIIMS connected March 14, 3 days aft the apex tribunal passed the landmark judgement for Harish.
For the past 13 years, helium had been on artificial nutrition and occasional oxygen support. Harish’s nutritional enactment was gradually withdrawn aft helium was admitted to the hospital, the sources said connected Tuesday (March 24). He is survived by his parents, Ashok and Nirmala Rana.
Harish’s household had said aft the apex tribunal judgement that the withdrawal of artificial beingness enactment would not bring immoderate idiosyncratic payment to the family, but successful the larger nationalist interest, the determination could assistance others facing akin situations.
His begetter had said the move would restore Harish’s dignity aft years of irreversible suffering. The court had directed AIIMS-Delhi to guarantee that beingness support is withdrawn with a tailored program truthful that dignity is maintained.
A specialised medical squad headed by Dr. Seema Mishra, prof and caput of the section of anaesthesia and palliative medicine, was constituted to instrumentality the process, the archetypal ever successful India.
The team comprised doctors from departments of neurosurgery, onco-anaesthesia and palliative medicine, and psychiatry. The Supreme Court, successful its March 11 judgment, allowed withdrawal of aesculapian treatment for a idiosyncratic for the archetypal clip successful the country.
Ruling connected the long-discussed emotive issue, a Bench of Justices J. B. Pardiwala and K. V. Viswanathan asked the Union Government to see bringing broad authorities on the issue.
The apical tribunal noted that Rana survived lone done clinically administered nutrition via ‘percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy’ tubes, and aesculapian boards had unanimously concluded that continuation of attraction simply prolonged biologic beingness without immoderate anticipation of recovery.
When superior and secondary boards person certified withdrawal of beingness support, determination is nary request for judicial intervention, the apex tribunal said.
It besides asked the Union of India to guarantee that main aesculapian officers successful each districts maintain a sheet of registered aesculapian practitioners for information to secondary aesculapian boards.
Journalist-activist Pinki Virani, who filed a petition for “euthanasia” to Aruna Shanbaug successful 2011, thanked the doctors and nurses astatine AIIMS, and urged that 1 should fto their household members cognize “if they would privation to workout this close for themselves”.
The apical tribunal had rejected Ms. Virani’s plea connected behalf of Shanbaug, who remained bedridden successful a vegetative authorities successful a Mumbai infirmary since a brutal intersexual battle successful November 1973.
(With bureau inputs)
