World's oldest comatose patient, nurse Aruna Shanbaug, who had been in a vegetative state ever since she was raped, died in Mumbai's KEM Hospital on Monday morning after remaining in coma for almost 42 years. Doctors at Mumbai's state-run KEM Hospital, where she worked and was raped, said Shanbaug was suffering from pneumonia and was on ventilator support.
A junior nurse, Shanbaug was brutally raped by contract sweeper boy Sohanlal B Walmiki in the same hospital on the night of November 27, 1973 when she was changing. While indulging in the act, he had choked her with a chain which cut off oxygen supply to her brain, resulting in injuries to the brain stem and cervical chord injury that left her in a vegetative state since then.
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.
Generations after generations of nursing students at KEM Hospital have attended to her needs - giving her bath, changing her clothes and feeding her.
Aruna's niece Mangala and nephew Vinayak Nayak reached the hospital from Virar soon after they were told of it. On Monday, 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.
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.
