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Update: Row over nurse Aruna Shanbaugs funeral

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A controversy erupted over the funeral, with two relatives of Shanbaug staking claim to perform the last rites.

Published: Mon 18 May 2015, 11:04 AM

Updated: Tue 10 Jan 2023, 12:13 PM

  • By
  • (IANS)

Mumbai: A controversy has erupted over performing the last rites of nurse Aruna Shanbaug, the world's oldest comatose patient who died on Monday after lying in coma for around 42 years, with two of her relatives staking claim to do so.

Shanbaug had been in a vegetative state ever since she was raped by a contract sweeper in the KEM hospital on the night of November 27, 1973.

The last rites shall be performed around 4 pm on Monday.

A controversy erupted over the funeral, with two relatives of Shanbaug staking claim to perform the last rites.

They claimed before mediapersons that all attempts to meet Shanbaug were stone-walled by the hospital authorities.

However, nurses at the KEM Hospital demanded that since they had tended to Shanbaug for over four decades, they should be allowed to perform the last rites.

The hospital, civic and police authorities have reportedly evolved a compromise formula by which the nurses and the two relatives shall jointly perform the funeral.

Presently, the hospital has kept her body for public viewing as thousands of people, including nurses, commoners, politicians and others paid homage to Shanbaug.

She was aged in her early 60s, deserted by most of her relatives during her lifetime but was looked after with dedication by nurses of Asia's largest public healthcare facility, the BMC-run KEM Hospital where she lay in Ward No. 4A.

Here is a brief timeline of Shanbaug’s life:

Aruna Shanbaug came to Mumbai from Haldipur in Karnataka. She had got a job as a nurse at King Edward Memorial Hospital. She stayed with her sister Shanta Nayak for at least a month in a Worli chawl and would visit her sibling regularly until the horrific rape.

Shanbaug was assaulted and raped by sweeper Sohanlal Bharta Valmiki on November 27, 1973. He choked her with a dog chain and sodomised her. It resulted in oxygen being cut off to her brain. This resulted in extensive damage to her brain that left her in a vegetative state.

She was found lying unconscious the day after the sexual assault. Since then, she was confined to a room in ward 4 of KEM Hospital.

Shanta Nayak, her sole relative in Mumbai, died in September 2013. KEM Hospital employees said her relatives had stopped visiting her a few years after the rape. Since then, nurses and doctors had cared for her.

In March 2011, the Supreme Court rejected a petition filed by author Pinki Virani seeking euthanasia for Shanbaug. The petition was opposed by the hospital’s management and nursing staff. Virani also wrote a book on Shanbaug.

Shanbaug’s bones turned brittle, her teeth decayed and she often developed bed sores. She was usually fed mashed food through a feeding tube. Nurses said she was fond of fish.

*Her rapist Sohanlal Bharta Valmiki served a seven-year sentence in prison after being convicted of robbery and attempted murder. The sodomy was not disclosed.

Courtesy : Hindustan Times



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