New Delhi, India

While hearing the tragic Kolkata doctor rape-murder case, Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, on Tuesday, referred to the Aruna Shanbaug incident. He said that due to ingrained patriarchal biases in the nation, women doctors are targeted at an increasing pace as women join the workplace and that India cannot wait for another rape to bring some real changes on the ground.

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What is the Aruna Shanbaug case?

In 1973, Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse at KEM hospital was brutally attacked, sexually assaulted and left in a vegetative state. 

Shanbaug, who was 25 years old at the time, was working in the hospital's surgery department. At the time of the tragic incident, she was engaged to be married.

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On the night of November 27, 1973, she was brutally attacked by a ward attendant at the hospital. The rapist, identified as Sohanlal Bharta Walmiki, sexually assaulted her before strangling her using a dog chain. 

The brutal attack left Shanbaug with severe brain damage and she fell into a persistent vegetative state (PVS). 

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Reportedly, the ward boy attacked her because Aruna accused him of stealing food meant for medical experiments at the hospital and threatened to report the theft to hospital authorities.

She remained in PVS, unable to speak and reliant on others, until she died in 2015. Till her death, she was kept alive through forced feeding.

Euthanasia debate

Given Aruna Shanbaug's quality of life, or the lack of it, she even became the centre of a national debate over euthanasia in 2011. 

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That year, a journalist Pinki Virani — the writer of a book on Aruna titled 'Aruna's Story' — filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking permission for euthanasia. On March 7, 2011, the Supreme Court rejected the petition for active euthanasia. The court said that Aruna was not brain-dead and responded to certain stimuli. 

After years in a persistent vegetative state, Aruna contracted pneumonia and died of it on May 18, 2015. Her attacker, Sohanlal Bharta Walmiki, escaped sexual assault charges as "sodomy" was not classified as rape under Indian law back then. Instead, he was charged with robbery and attempted murder and only served a seven-year sentence. He was released in 1980. 

(With inputs from agencies)