The court rejected the case and laid guidelines for mercy killing in extreme cases of terminally ill patients.
Aruna Shanbaug, is lying in a "persistent vegetative state" in Mumbai's KEM Hospital for over 37 years after a brutal sexual assault.
Active euthanasia (mercy killing) is illegal, yet "passive euthanasia" can be permissible in exceptional circumstances, a bench of justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Mishra said dismissing the plea filed on behalf of KEM hospital nurse Aruna Ramachandra Shanbaug.
The apex court said that as per the facts and circumstances of the case, medical evidence and other material suggest that Aruna need not be subjected to euthanasia.
The bench, however, said since there is no law presently in the country on euthanasia, mercy killing of terminally-ill patient "under passive euthanasia doctrine can be resorted to in exceptional cases."
It said such a plea made by patients or relatives must be examined by expert doctors and placed before the concerned high court, which will take the final decision.
This SC guideline would hold till Parliament enacts a law on euthanasia.
On last Wednesday, the Supreme Court had reserved its judgment on her euthanasia plea.
The apex court heard the plea of activist Pinki Virani that feeding of the nurse should be stopped immediately.
The petition said that Aruna cannot see or speak properly and as such keeping her alive violates her right to live with dignity.
Aruna Shanbhag, a nurse from Haldipur, Shimoga, Karnataka, was assaulted by a Sohanlal Bhartha Walmiki, a ward boy at Mumbai's King Edward Memorial Hospital in 1973.
Walmiki was motivated partly by resentment for being ordered about and castigated by Shanbaug. On the night of November 27, 1973 he attacked her, while she was changing clothes in the hospital basement for leaving her shift.
The plea for Aruna's mercy killing had been made by writer Pinky Virani who had told the court in her petition that the nurse slipped into coma after she was attacked by a sweeper who wrapped a dog chain around her neck and yanked the victim with it.
According to the petition, he had tried to rape the victim but finding that she was menstruating, indulged in anal sex. To immobilise her during this act, he twisted the chain around her neck and fled the scene after the committing the heinous offence, it had said.
Virani had said that due to strangulation by the chain, the supply of oxygen to the brain stopped and the cortex got damaged. She also had brain stem contusion injury associated with cervical cord injury.
According to the petitioner, in the last 37 years after the incident, Aruna has become "featherweight" and her bones are brittle. She is prone to bed sores.
