Supreme Court's Aruna Shanbhag judgment

Its good to be back to the blog. In my absence, I noticed that lots of people accessed a post I had put out on Aruna Shanbhag in 2009 when Pinki Virani's petition in the Supreme Court was supposed to be heard. I was away at a fellowship workshop when the apex court finally gave its judgement in the case on Mar 7, 2011 after asking a panel of doctors to medically examine Aruna again.

The Supreme Court rejected the euthanasia plea, but the judgement is clearly a landmark one in Indian judicial history. Hence, I thought it was important to put the judgment online.

The 110-page judgement by Justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Mishra starts with a couplet from Mirza Ghalib:

Marte hain arzoo mein marne ki
Maut aati hain par nahi aati...

Unfortunately, when I give a link to the specific page of the judgement on the Supreme Court website, it is generating an error. Therefore, I request that readers click on this Supreme Court Information System and click on Search by Date of Judgement link on the left nav bar. Change the dates in both the drop down menus to Mar 7, 2011, and you will see the judgement in Aruna Shanbhag case.

Thanks and apologies