On Wednesday, the Supreme Court delivered a profound resolution to a family’s 12-year heartbreak, granting permission to withdraw life support for 31-year-old Harish Rana, who has been trapped in a permanent vegetative state since a devastating 2013 accident.
Rana’s life essentially stopped when he suffered a severe traumatic brain injury after falling from a fourth-floor balcony while studying engineering in Chandigarh. For over a decade, the young man has existed purely through clinically assisted nutrition and hydration (CANH) administered via a PEG tube.
Justices JB Pardiwala and KV Viswanathan recognized the grim reality of his medical condition. While Rana experiences basic sleep-wake cycles, the bench noted he exhibits zero meaningful interaction, is entirely dependent on others, and has shown no clinical improvement.
This ruling is more than a merciful conclusion for one family; it is a monumental legal watershed. It marks what is likely the first instance of the top court directly applying its landmark 2018 Common Cause judgment—which legalized passive euthanasia—to grant relief in a specific individual’s plea. The bench ruled that the medical board can now legally exercise its clinical judgment to withdraw treatment.
The verdict ends an exhausting legal battle for Rana’s parents. They were previously turned away by the Delhi High Court, which controversially ruled that because Rana was “sustaining himself” without mechanical ventilators, he wasn’t technically terminally ill. By stepping in, the Supreme Court has firmly rejected that narrow interpretation. The ruling acknowledges that being permanently tethered to a feeding tube without consciousness strips away human dignity, finally offering a clear legal path to peace for families enduring similar agonizing situations.