Mumbai elderly couple seeks President’s nod to end lives

MUMBAI: An elderly couple from Mumbai, has written to the President’s office, seeking permission for active euthanasia or doctorassisted death.

The couple, Iravati Lavate, 79, who retired as a school principal, and her husband Narayan, 86, a former government employee, have no major health problems.

However, the fear of falling terminally ill along with a lingering feeling of not being able to “contribute to society” pushed them to write to the President, they said.

While present laws in the country do not allow active euthanasia, health experts told HT that the couple’s plea does not fit into the category of active euthanasia as they don’t have any life-limiting disease.

Dr Roop Gursahani, a neurologist, who is a part of a group advocating ‘living wills’ (see box), said even countries where active euthanasia is legal, the requisite is that the patient must have a terminally ill medical condition.

“Physician assisted dying is possible in a few countries, all democracies with very effective law and justice systems. However, it is reserved for terminally ill patients with unacceptable suffering,” he said.

He added that no one should have to ask to be put to death because they have no family to take care of them in their old age.

The couple’s letter to the President says, “Both the petitioners are in reasonably good health, not afflicted by any serious ailment as on the date of this petition,”

It adds, “It is unfair to compel them to wait till some serious ailment/deformity befalls on them (us) and would urge that they may be saved from such a contingency by passing sentence of death.”

Lavate, retired as an employee of the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation after working for nearly thirty years. His wife, an ex- principal of a school, was a science teacher for 37 years.

Lavate told HT he felt compelled to write the letter as he believes that since the president has the constitutional power to pardon those sentenced to death, he should also have the power to allow the “right to death”.

The couple does not have any children. When HT visited them, Iravati said, “Within the first year of our marriage, we had decided that we didn’t want to have children. Now, in our old age, we don’t want others to be liable for our condition later.”

A national discourse on euthanasia started in India in 2011, when the Supreme Court, while hearing the case of a nurse from KEM Hospital, Aruna Shanbaug, who was in a vegetative state for nearly 30 years, legalised passive euthanasia.

Shanbaug had been in a vegetative state since 1973 after she was sexually assaulted in the hospital premises.

However, she could not be euthanised as the petitioner in the case was not her kin.