In a quiet room filled with the steady hum of machines, time has taken on a cruel stillness for Harish Rana and his family. Tubes, monitors, and life-support systems now do what his body can no longer do on its own. Outside that room, a family waits, torn between hope and heartbreak, love and loss.
This week, that deeply personal anguish reached the doors of the Supreme Court of India, where judges were asked to decide a question no law can answer easily: should life be prolonged at all costs, or should dignity guide the final moments of a human life?
On 13 January, the family of Harish Rana stood before the Supreme Court of India, carrying a plea shaped by exhaustion and love. Through tearful submissions, they told the judges they could no longer bear to watch Harish suffer on life-support machines. They said continued medical intervention was only prolonging pain, not life, and urged the court to allow the withdrawal of the medical system so he could live naturally for whatever time remained.
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The judges listened in silence, acknowledging the emotional weight of the request, and reserved their order for 15 January—a day that will decide between prolonged treatment and dignity in dying.
For the family, this is not a case about euthanasia in abstract legal terms. It is about watching a loved one exist in a space between life and death—alive because machines insist so, not because the body chooses to.
The Supreme Court, acknowledging the gravity of the plea, said it would pass detailed orders on 15 January after examining the legal, medical, and ethical issues involved.
On 20 August 2013, the day of Raksha Bandhan, at 7:21 pm, the phone rang at Rana’s home in Delhi. Harish, then a final-year civil engineering student at Punjab University, had fallen from the balcony of his paying guest accommodation in Mohali. This incident has changed everything ever since.
Harish cannot move. He cannot speak. He breathes through a tracheostomy tube. He is fed through a gastrostomy tube.
Rana, now in his mid-thirties, has remained in a vegetative state for nearly 13 years. Acting under earlier directions of the court, a Primary and Secondary Medical Board examined him. The Primary Board recorded that he was lying in bed with a tracheostomy tube for respiration and a gastrostomy for feeding. While it found intact brainstem function, it noted that Harish’s vegetative state required external support for his feeding, bladder, bowel, and back.
The case has reopened a sensitive national conversation around end-of-life care, passive euthanasia, and the right to die with dignity—issues that sit at the uneasy intersection of law, medicine, morality, and emotion.
India’s highest court has, in earlier landmark judgements, recognised that the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution includes the right to die with dignity. It has allowed passive euthanasia, which involves the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, under strict procedural safeguards. These include medical board opinions, the consent of family members, and judicial oversight to prevent misuse.
As 15 January approaches, the courtroom will once again hear arguments framed in legal language: consent, procedure, precedent. But beneath those words lies a quieter reality: a family standing at the edge of goodbye.
For them, this is not about winning or losing a case. It is about choosing compassion over control and dignity over delay.
The Supreme Court’s decision will determine whether machines continue to speak for Harish Rana or whether silence, nature, and time will be allowed to take over.
