Aruna Shanbaug has been brain-dead and in a vegetative state since the night of 27 November 1973, when she was brutally and sexually assaulted by a ward-boy who also choked her with a dog-chain. This cut off blood supply to the brain, resulting in brain stem contusion and injury to her cervical cord, which also left her cortically blind. She was artificially kept alive by nurses at Mumbai’s KEM Hospital even though Shanbaug herself would have been unaware of life as we know it.
Sat Biswas 