Historically, India is no stranger to the right to die as in most Oriental cultures, opting to die is often an act of honour, of salvation like the Santhara in Jainism, Hindu saints are known to take sanyas and even opt for Samadhi etc
In the Common Cause v. Union of India Supreme court upholded the right to die with dignity and gave legal sanction to passive euthanasia and execution of a living will of persons suffering from chronic terminal diseases and likely to go into a permanent vegetative state.

Active euthanasia:-

• While active euthanasia entails the use of lethal substances to end a life.
• While the Supreme Court has legalised passive euthanasia, it has not passed any judgment on active euthanasia.

There is clearly a desire among a number of patients at the end of often terrible battles with debilitating, incurable diseases to end their suffering with the support of their relatives. To deny this right is to prolong the suffering for individuals and families. So active euthanasia needs to be considered.

To allow a terminally ill individual to end their life is the only humane, rational and compassionate choice. The right to life and the right to private and family life should be interpreted broadly to include decisions about quality of life, including decisions about death if the life is no longer one of quality. This will help many families. It will stop a lot of pain and also lessen expenses.

People who are proponents of active euthanasia say that our bodies are our own, and we should be allowed to do what we want with them. So it’s wrong to make anyone live longer than they want. In fact making people go on living when they don’t want to violates their personal freedom and human rights .It’s immoral, they say to force people to continue living in suffering and pain.

In the fundamental rights enlisted in the Constitution there is already mention of right to life with dignity (Article 21).The outcome of the judgment lays down a broad legal framework for protecting the dignity of a terminally ill patient or one in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) with no hope of cure or recovery. In such circumstances accelerating the process of death for reducing the period of suffering constitutes a right to live with dignity.

The core message is that all adults with the capacity to give consent have the right of self determination and autonomy and the right to refuse medical treatment is also encompassed in it. Burdening a dying patient with life-prolonging treatment and equipment merely because medical technology has advanced would be destructive of the patient’s dignity.

Neither the law nor the constitution can compel an individual who is competent and able to take decisions to disclose reasons for refusing medical treatment and such a refusal is not subject to the supervisory control of an outside entity.

However effective safeguards need to be put in place to avoid legal and ethical issues like:-

1. Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code prescribes punishment for attempting suicide’
2. Even the bill government is preparing Bill deals only with terminal illness.
3. Even recent supreme court judgement permits passive euthanasia but not active.
4. Other opponents fear that if euthanasia was made legal, the laws regulating itwould be abused, and people would be killed who didn’t really want to die.

Euthanasia raises a number of agonising moral dilemmas:

• If euthanasia is permitted without the necessity to abide by government regulations and laws, people will use it as a means to get out of even simpler troubles
• Is it ever right to end the life of a terminally ill patient who is undergoing severe pain and suffering?
• Under what circumstances can euthanasia be justifiable, if at all?
• Is there a moral difference between killing someone and letting them die?
• Can state engage in actively killing someone which is the case in active euthanasia?

Even countries where active euthanasia is legal, the requisite is that the patient must have a terminally ill disease. So this issue needs to be well thought out from multiple perspectives as life of human is irreplaceable.