Passive Euthanasia — From Doctrine to Application

For eight years India had a right to die with dignity on paper but no case that fully tested it. That changed on 11 March 2026, when the Supreme Court in Harish Rana v. Union of India cleared the withdrawal of artificial feeding from a man who had lain in a permanent vegetative state for thirteen years. It was the first full application of the passive-euthanasia framework laid down in Common Cause (2018) and eased in 2023 turning a landmark doctrine into a working procedure, and reopening the ethical debate over how India lets its most helpless patients die.