The Supreme Court on Monday said it would hear after two weeks the plea filed by the NGO, All Creatures Great and Small (ACGAS), seeking the right to passive euthanasia for rabies patients.
A two-judge bench of the apex court, led by Justice B R Gavai and Justice K Vinod Chandran, adjourned the plea for two weeks.
The NGO, ACGAS, had moved the apex court in 2019 and prayed that a procedure should be laid down for rabies patients to allow them or their guardians to opt for the assistance of physicians for assisted dying or passive euthanasia.
In 2020, hearing the Public Interest Litigation (PIL), the top court issued a notice to the Centre and sought responses from ministries of health and environment.
The NGO had moved the top court, after a five-judge Constitution bench of the SC had on March 2018, in its verdict held that the right to life includes the right to die and legalised passive euthanasia by allowing the creation of a ‘living will’.
The SC had said that legalised passive euthanasia could be provided to terminally ill patients or those in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) with no hope of recovering a dignified exit by refusing medical treatment or a life support system.
Senior lawyer Sonia Mathur, appearing for ACGAS, in the petition, said that rabies has a 100 per cent fatality rate and can be “more torturous and harrowing to succumb to than other forms of ailments”.
The petitioner further highlighted that the unique symptoms of rabies make it an exceptional case, where the patients have to be tied and shackled to their beds reducing their personal freedom, movement dignity and integrity.
The NGO pleaded to the apex court that it should consider the “exceptional/violent nature of the disease and the absence of a cure thereof that makes it a separate class”.