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Aruna Shanbaug: Life sentence over

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Aruna Shanbaug, vegetative since past 4 decades, put on ventilator support in Mumbai

Last rites of Aruna Shanbaug begins in Mumbai. (TOI photo by Sanjay Hadkar)

Florence Nightingale Award in memory of Nurse Aruna Shanbaug.First awardees:Nursing staff of KEM Hospital - for 42 years of selfless care. — Shobhaa De (@DeShobhaa) May 18, 2015

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No euthanasia for Aruna Shanbaug, reiterate KEM hospital nurses

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MUMBAI: At 8.30am on Monday, Aruna Shanbaug , once a nurse at KEM Hospital and then a patient for 42 years, lost her agonizing battle with life — one she barely lived.She was a few weeks short of turning 68 and nurses were planning to celebrate her victory over yet another life-threatening lung infection and life in general.Instead, a pall of gloom descended at the busy Parel hospital campus as news of Aruna’s death spread among nurses. She had suffered a cardiac arrest around 6.30am, following which her condition rapidly deteriorated.Doctors at the intensive care unit tried to revive her for the next two hours but she did not respond. She had been battling pneumonia since the previous Tuesday when she was rushed to the ICU and put on ventilator.This time, never to return to her small room outside Ward 4.The tiny room had been home to her since the brutal sexual assault of November 1973 by ward boy Sohanlal Valmiki. It had left her in a permanent vegetative state—she was conscious but unaware of her surroundings as the blood supply to her brain was lost for way too long during the assault.Generations after generations of nursing students at KEM Hospital have attended to her needs—giving her bath, changing her clothes and feeding her.Perhaps for this reason, the presence of Aruna’s relatives and their wish to perform the last rites were faced with stark opposition from the nurses. They had also fought all attempts to take Aruna away from their care. In 1980s, they fought the BMC while later in 2009 they protested author Pinki Virani’s move to Supreme Court seeking an end to her being force-fed. “Where were they for the past 42 years when she needed them? They went on with their lives as she lay here,” said senior nurse Kalpana Gajula. It later turned out that hospital authorities had informed the relatives about her demise.Aruna’s niece Mangala and nephew Vinayak Nayak reached the hospital from Virar soon after they were told of it. Mangala said in the past three days, the family had come to the hospital several times to visit her but could not do so as she was in the ICU. “The family had attempted to meet her earlier as well, but it was never easy to get past hospital protocols,” she said.On Monday, though, for Aruna’s sake, the hospital and her family decided to come together and give her a dignified farewell. People from all walks of life came to pay their last tribute to her. A woman in her late 30s broke down as she stepped out after paying her tribute. “My mother has been lying in a vegetative state for nearly four decades now. I know what it means to take care of such a person all these years. I have heard about Aruna since I came to Mumbai after my marriage,” said the woman, who did not want to be identified.Her body was taken to the Bhoiwada crematorium, where nurses carried her on their shoulders one last time. As dean Dr Avinash Supe and Nayak performed the rituals, almost all attendees were teary eyed. “According to Supreme Court directions, we were her custodians, but we thought the relatives should also be allowed to carry out their religious rituals,” said Dr Supe, who lit the pyre around 5.45pm. The nurses rejected the GSB Seva Mandal’s offer to pay for her final rites.Umesh Pai, who hailed from Aruna’s village in Karnataka, was also present for the last rites. He recalled her as the brightest of the nine siblings who was also the only one to complete her studies. “She was to get married in two months. She was a bright girl and a disciplinarian,” he recalled, adding that only one of her siblings, Shyamala, is alive today. An octogenarian, she lives in Karnataka. “All of them drifted over time,” he said.रेपिस्ट के हमले के बाद 42 साल कोमा में रहीं अरुणा शानबाग की मौत