Mumbai Nurse Aruna Shanbaug Dies 42 Years After Brutal Rape That Left Her in Coma

Mumbai:  Aruna Shanbaug, a Mumbai nurse who was raped in 1973 by a staff member at the hospital she worked in, has died after being in a coma for 42 years. She was 68.

Ms Shanbaug was in the Intensive Care unit of Mumbai’s state-run KEM Hospital, where she had worked and was raped. Doctors had said that Ms Shanbaug was suffering from pneumonia and was on ventilator support.

She was 26 years old and a junior nurse at the hospital when Ms Shanbaug was brutally assaulted and raped allegedly by a ward boy and cleaner named Sohanlal Bharta Valmiki. He also choked her with a dog chain, leaving her comatose.

In 2011, the Supreme Court had rejected a plea by author Pinki Virani to stop force feeding her. Ms Virani, who had authored a book titled ‘Aruna’s Story,’ had argued for euthanasia.

But former and present staff members and nurses at KEM Hospital, who looked after her all these years, strongly opposed euthanasia.