Aruna Ramchandra Shanbaug (1 June 1948 – 18 May 2015), was an Indian nurse who was at the centre of attention in a court case on euthanasia after spending over 41 years in a vegetative state as a result of a sexual assault.

[2] On 24 January 2011, after Shanbaug had been in this state for 37 years, the Supreme Court of India responded to a plea for euthanasia filed by journalist Pinki Virani, setting up a medical panel to examine her.

[15] Shortly after Shanbaug's death was announced, however, Sohanlal was tracked down by Mumbai-based journalist Dnyanesh Chavan from the Marathi daily Sakal to his father-in-law's village of Parpa in western Uttar Pradesh.

[15] When interviewed, Sohanlal described his version of the assault, claiming it had been committed in a "fit of rage" and that he had no clear recollection of when it had taken place or what he may have done, though he denied raping her and said that it "must have been someone else".

He says that "there was an argument and a physical fight" when Shanbaug refused to give him leave to visit his ill mother-in-law and said that she would report him for poor work.

[17] In the 1980s, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (BMC) made two attempts to move Shanbaug outside the KEM Hospital to free the bed she had been occupying for seven years.

On 17 December 2010, the Supreme Court, while admitting the plea to end the life made by activist-journalist Pinki Virani, sought a report on Shanbaug's medical condition from the hospital in Mumbai and the government of Maharashtra.

[22] On 7 March 2011, the Supreme Court, in a landmark judgement, issued a set of broad guidelines legalizing passive euthanasia in India.

[25]: 127–128 Since the KEM Hospital staff wished that Aruna Shanbaug be allowed to live, Virani's petition to withdraw life support was declined.

Thus, in our cogent opinion, the question of law involved requires careful consideration by a Constitution Bench of this Court for the benefit of humanity as a whole.

[26]Following the Supreme Court decision rejecting the plea, the nursing staff at the hospital—who had opposed the petition and had been looking after Shanbaug since she had lapsed into a vegetative state—distributed sweets and cut a cake to celebrate what they termed her "rebirth".

Duttakumar Desai wrote the Marathi play Katha Arunachi in 1994–95, which was performed at college level and subsequently staged by Vinay Apte in 2002.

[29][30] A Gujarati fiction novel, Jad Chetan, was written by popular novelist Harkisan Mehta in 1985 based on Aruna Shanbaug's case.