Would You Arrest Romeo’s Juliet?

Can mercy and death go together? Here lies the difference between euthanasia and murder

Everyone has heard of star-crossed lovers and family feuds. Romeo and Juliet. Laila-Majnu. The McCoys and Hatfields. A famous cricketer taking a sworn enemy’s daughter for his wife.The list is endless.

Many of these stories—stories they are—centre on a ‘crime’ which is the only one in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) where failure is punished. Success puts the ‘culprit’ beyond the long arm of the law.

Section 309 of the IPC deals with suicide. To commit suicide is an offence. Of course, no one can arrest a dead person. So the next best thing is to arrest the person who attempts and fails. Or, better still, go after the ones who drove the person in question over the brink. It’s called ‘aiding and abetting another to commit suicide’. An accessory to the crime.

A recent news report mentioned the fourth successful bid over the railing of the Sea Link in Mumbai. It also gave details of other ‘favourite’ spots all over the world. Sort of, ‘Take your pick’. Deep, silent waters, beckoning eternal peace for the world-weary. Aiding? Abetting?

Returning to the rose by any other name, (“…that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet”) Romeo, seeing his love ‘dead’, kills himself. But Juliet was not really dead. Suspended animation was the friar’s potion’s trick; unknown to Romeo, of course. So, when Juliet awakens and sees the sacrifice her lover has made, she follows suit. But what if Juliet had not taken the fatal step?

You be the judge.

In today’s world, would she not be guilty of taking Romeo’s life? Would not the Montague family have bayed for her blood, bad blood already existing between them and the Capulets? If she had not misled Romeo with her theatrics, would not the poor boy be still alive? And, even if Juliet were dead as a dodo, would not the cops have booked her? According to the extant statues, our answer would be a ‘Yes’. Misrepresentation, if not aiding and abetting. Even today, the Bard would be right if he ended with his immortal lament, “For never was there a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

There is another sadder, and truer, angle to this law. The act of euthanasia is also on a par with murder. Should, or should not, a person have a right to die as much as it is his fundamental and human right to live? The courts have, ad nauseum, upheld a man’s right to live a dignified life. The Constitution guarantees a good quality of existence, an environment where each can seek a better status and happiness. Why then must a patient suffer, physically and the indignity of being in a vegetative state?

The arguments, pro and con, are deep and rest on solid foundations. One side seeks relief from interminable pain and misery. Across the fence, others worry about ethics, morals and the chances of foul play. But the most compelling argument seems to be that “Euthanasia does not mean more people dying. It means less people suffering.”

You be the judge.

If a person is terminally ill and there is simply no chance of recovery, is s/he entitled to call it quits? Can s/he arrange for equipment, which s/he can somehow personally operate, to put an end to it all? Dr Kevorkian, the so-called doctor of death, has perfected such an apparatus. No one actually kills the victim. He does it himself. But then, supplying the ‘death machine’ is an abetment to suicide.

So, till we, in our infinite wisdom, decide what is right and what is not, the sufferer may well say, “Agar jannam durr ruuyay zamenast, amenasto, amenasto, amenast.”(If there is ever a hell on earth, it’s here, it’s here, it’s here).

Courtesy: Moneylife

Bapoo Malcolm is a practising lawyer in Mumbai. Please email your comments to mail@moneylife.in