Give India a Legal Framework for Euthanasia and Assisted Dying
The Issue
What happens when a person has spent years fighting an illness, tried treatment after treatment, and still experiences suffering that they consider unbearable? What should the law allow a competent adult to choose when they have endured profound suffering and believe there is no realistic path to a life they can bear?
India should have a serious, transparent national debate about legalizing physician-administered euthanasia and physician-assisted dying under exceptionally strict safeguards—including, as a separate and highly scrutinized category, severe, enduring and genuinely treatment-resistant psychiatric illness.
This petition calls upon the Government of India and Parliament to begin that process.
India has already recognized the principle of dying with dignity
The Supreme Court of India has recognized that the constitutional right to life under Article 21 includes a right to die with dignity in certain circumstances.
India's existing legal framework permits the withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining medical treatment under carefully defined safeguards.
But this is not the same as legalizing active euthanasia or physician-assisted dying.
Active euthanasia remains impermissible in India.
In its judgment of 11 March 2026 in Harish Rana v. Union of India, the Supreme Court clarified the distinction between euthanasia and withholding or withdrawing medical treatment. The Court also indicated that the existing judicial framework should not be treated as a permanent substitute for legislation and urged the Union Government to consider comprehensive legislation concerning end-of-life care.
India therefore has an opportunity to address this question through Parliament, public consultation and comprehensive legislation.
Other countries have already confronted this difficult question
India would not be entering completely unexplored territory.
The Netherlands has a statutory framework under which euthanasia and assisted suicide can be lawful when strict statutory due-care criteria are satisfied.
These criteria include a voluntary and well-considered request, unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement, informing the patient about their condition and prognosis, determining that there is no reasonable alternative, consultation with an independent physician, and due medical care.
Importantly, the Dutch Government expressly states that this framework can apply not only to physical illness but also to psychiatric disorders, dementia and certain other medical conditions.
Belgium has likewise established a legal euthanasia framework involving serious and incurable medical conditions and unbearable suffering. Its Federal Commission for the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia reviews cases for compliance with the law.
And psychiatric cases are not merely theoretical.
Belgium's official 2025 statistics recorded 70 euthanasia cases involving psychiatric conditions, representing 1.6% of all reported euthanasia cases that year. Official Belgian reporting from earlier years has included psychiatric conditions such as recurrent depression.
These countries do not prove that euthanasia is simple or without risk.
They demonstrate something different:
Democratic societies can establish legal frameworks, safeguards, medical oversight and review mechanisms to confront one of the most difficult questions in medicine and law.
India should be willing to examine the same question for itself.
Mental illness must be part of the conversation
A future Indian law should not treat psychiatric illness as an afterthought.
There are people living for years with severe and disabling psychiatric disorders, including severe forms of depression, OCD, PTSD and other conditions, whose suffering can remain profound despite extensive treatment.
Some patients undergo years of medication.
Some undergo psychotherapy and other evidence-based interventions.
Some try multiple treatment approaches without obtaining meaningful and lasting relief.
For some people, the illness can become chronic, debilitating and profoundly destructive to their ability to live the life they once had.
At the same time, psychiatric cases are extraordinarily complicated.
A desire to die can itself be caused or intensified by mental illness.
That is why not every suicidal person, depressed person or person experiencing a psychiatric crisis should automatically qualify.
Any future legal framework would need to establish an exceptionally demanding threshold.
The question should be whether there can ever be a carefully regulated pathway for a competent adult with a severe, enduring, medically documented and genuinely treatment-resistant psychiatric disorder, after extensive independent assessment and every reasonable safeguard.
What safeguards would be necessary?
A responsible framework could consider requirements such as:
• Multiple independent assessments by qualified psychiatrists and physicians.
• Repeated assessments of decision-making capacity.
• A documented history showing that the disorder is severe, persistent and genuinely treatment-resistant.
• Independent review of the person's complete treatment history.
• Assessment of whether reasonable evidence-based treatment options remain.
• Careful determination that the request is not simply the result of an acute suicidal crisis.
• Mandatory waiting and reflection periods.
• Repeated confirmation of the request over time.
• Thorough assessment for coercion, abuse, family pressure or financial pressure.
• Access to appropriate medical and psychiatric treatment before eligibility is considered.
• Independent ethical and legal oversight.
• Mandatory reporting and review of every approved case.
• Clear criminal and professional penalties for violations of the law.
The purpose of such safeguards would be to protect vulnerable people while allowing Parliament to examine whether exceptional circumstances can exist in which a competent adult's enduring autonomy and suffering should receive legal recognition.
This is not a call to abandon suicide prevention
Suicide prevention and regulated medical assistance in dying are not identical legal questions.
A person experiencing an acute suicidal crisis should receive immediate support, protection and access to treatment.
A potential euthanasia or assisted-dying framework would concern an entirely different situation: a person who, after extensive medical and psychiatric evaluation, repeatedly and voluntarily requests assistance under a legally defined process and meets every statutory safeguard.
The distinction is critical.
India can remain committed to preventing avoidable deaths while also examining whether there are exceptional circumstances in which the law should recognize a person's autonomy at the end of prolonged and unbearable suffering.
Why should India not examine this question?
Medicine has changed.
Treatment has changed.
Mental-health care has changed.
Our understanding of individual autonomy has changed.
Yet India's law concerning euthanasia remains largely governed by constitutional judgments and judicially created safeguards rather than a comprehensive parliamentary statute dealing with the full range of issues.
Doctors, patients, families and courts continue to face difficult questions about suffering, autonomy, dignity and the limits of medical intervention.
Those questions deserve a clear legal framework.
What this petition asks the Government of India and Parliament to do
I call upon the Government of India to establish an independent national commission on euthanasia and assisted dying and begin a transparent public consultation.
The commission should include:
• Constitutional and criminal-law experts
• Physicians
• Psychiatrists
• Palliative-care specialists
• Medical ethicists
• Disability-rights experts
• Mental-health professionals
• Patient representatives
• Caregivers and families
The commission should examine:
1. India's constitutional principles concerning dignity, liberty, autonomy and the right to life.
2. The Supreme Court's jurisprudence, including Common Cause and Harish Rana.
3. The arguments for and against physician-administered euthanasia.
4. The arguments for and against physician-assisted dying.
5. International frameworks, particularly Belgium and the Netherlands.
6. The medical evidence concerning severe treatment-resistant physical and psychiatric conditions.
7. The risk of coercion, abuse, discrimination and inadequate access to healthcare.
8. The safeguards necessary to distinguish enduring medical suffering from an acute suicidal crisis.
9. Whether, and under what conditions, psychiatric illness should ever be included within a future legal framework.
Following this process, Parliament should publicly debate the evidence and determine whether India should enact comprehensive legislation governing euthanasia and assisted dying.
This is ultimately about dignity, autonomy and compassion
Some suffering is visible.
Some suffering is not.
A person can look completely healthy while fighting an illness every day.
A person can spend years trying to get better while everyone around them assumes that another treatment, another doctor or another year will finally solve the problem.
A family can watch someone they love suffer for years and feel completely powerless.
These are not easy questions.
There are legitimate concerns about abuse, mistakes, coercion, disability discrimination and the possibility that someone could die when treatment or support might still have helped them.
Those concerns must be taken seriously.
But the answer to a difficult question should not be silence.
It should be evidence, safeguards, accountability and an honest national debate.
Belgium and the Netherlands have chosen to confront this issue through law.
India should examine whether, and under what safeguards, it should do the same.
Sign this petition
I am asking the Government of India and Parliament to begin a serious national examination of:
Physician-administered euthanasia.
Physician-assisted dying.
End-of-life autonomy.
And a legal framework under which severe, enduring and genuinely treatment-resistant psychiatric disorders can qualify for euthanasia or physician-assisted dying when all statutory eligibility requirements and enhanced psychiatric safeguards have been satisfied.
Please sign this petition and ask India to begin this debate.
14
The Issue
What happens when a person has spent years fighting an illness, tried treatment after treatment, and still experiences suffering that they consider unbearable? What should the law allow a competent adult to choose when they have endured profound suffering and believe there is no realistic path to a life they can bear?
India should have a serious, transparent national debate about legalizing physician-administered euthanasia and physician-assisted dying under exceptionally strict safeguards—including, as a separate and highly scrutinized category, severe, enduring and genuinely treatment-resistant psychiatric illness.
This petition calls upon the Government of India and Parliament to begin that process.
India has already recognized the principle of dying with dignity
The Supreme Court of India has recognized that the constitutional right to life under Article 21 includes a right to die with dignity in certain circumstances.
India's existing legal framework permits the withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining medical treatment under carefully defined safeguards.
But this is not the same as legalizing active euthanasia or physician-assisted dying.
Active euthanasia remains impermissible in India.
In its judgment of 11 March 2026 in Harish Rana v. Union of India, the Supreme Court clarified the distinction between euthanasia and withholding or withdrawing medical treatment. The Court also indicated that the existing judicial framework should not be treated as a permanent substitute for legislation and urged the Union Government to consider comprehensive legislation concerning end-of-life care.
India therefore has an opportunity to address this question through Parliament, public consultation and comprehensive legislation.
Other countries have already confronted this difficult question
India would not be entering completely unexplored territory.
The Netherlands has a statutory framework under which euthanasia and assisted suicide can be lawful when strict statutory due-care criteria are satisfied.
These criteria include a voluntary and well-considered request, unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement, informing the patient about their condition and prognosis, determining that there is no reasonable alternative, consultation with an independent physician, and due medical care.
Importantly, the Dutch Government expressly states that this framework can apply not only to physical illness but also to psychiatric disorders, dementia and certain other medical conditions.
Belgium has likewise established a legal euthanasia framework involving serious and incurable medical conditions and unbearable suffering. Its Federal Commission for the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia reviews cases for compliance with the law.
And psychiatric cases are not merely theoretical.
Belgium's official 2025 statistics recorded 70 euthanasia cases involving psychiatric conditions, representing 1.6% of all reported euthanasia cases that year. Official Belgian reporting from earlier years has included psychiatric conditions such as recurrent depression.
These countries do not prove that euthanasia is simple or without risk.
They demonstrate something different:
Democratic societies can establish legal frameworks, safeguards, medical oversight and review mechanisms to confront one of the most difficult questions in medicine and law.
India should be willing to examine the same question for itself.
Mental illness must be part of the conversation
A future Indian law should not treat psychiatric illness as an afterthought.
There are people living for years with severe and disabling psychiatric disorders, including severe forms of depression, OCD, PTSD and other conditions, whose suffering can remain profound despite extensive treatment.
Some patients undergo years of medication.
Some undergo psychotherapy and other evidence-based interventions.
Some try multiple treatment approaches without obtaining meaningful and lasting relief.
For some people, the illness can become chronic, debilitating and profoundly destructive to their ability to live the life they once had.
At the same time, psychiatric cases are extraordinarily complicated.
A desire to die can itself be caused or intensified by mental illness.
That is why not every suicidal person, depressed person or person experiencing a psychiatric crisis should automatically qualify.
Any future legal framework would need to establish an exceptionally demanding threshold.
The question should be whether there can ever be a carefully regulated pathway for a competent adult with a severe, enduring, medically documented and genuinely treatment-resistant psychiatric disorder, after extensive independent assessment and every reasonable safeguard.
What safeguards would be necessary?
A responsible framework could consider requirements such as:
• Multiple independent assessments by qualified psychiatrists and physicians.
• Repeated assessments of decision-making capacity.
• A documented history showing that the disorder is severe, persistent and genuinely treatment-resistant.
• Independent review of the person's complete treatment history.
• Assessment of whether reasonable evidence-based treatment options remain.
• Careful determination that the request is not simply the result of an acute suicidal crisis.
• Mandatory waiting and reflection periods.
• Repeated confirmation of the request over time.
• Thorough assessment for coercion, abuse, family pressure or financial pressure.
• Access to appropriate medical and psychiatric treatment before eligibility is considered.
• Independent ethical and legal oversight.
• Mandatory reporting and review of every approved case.
• Clear criminal and professional penalties for violations of the law.
The purpose of such safeguards would be to protect vulnerable people while allowing Parliament to examine whether exceptional circumstances can exist in which a competent adult's enduring autonomy and suffering should receive legal recognition.
This is not a call to abandon suicide prevention
Suicide prevention and regulated medical assistance in dying are not identical legal questions.
A person experiencing an acute suicidal crisis should receive immediate support, protection and access to treatment.
A potential euthanasia or assisted-dying framework would concern an entirely different situation: a person who, after extensive medical and psychiatric evaluation, repeatedly and voluntarily requests assistance under a legally defined process and meets every statutory safeguard.
The distinction is critical.
India can remain committed to preventing avoidable deaths while also examining whether there are exceptional circumstances in which the law should recognize a person's autonomy at the end of prolonged and unbearable suffering.
Why should India not examine this question?
Medicine has changed.
Treatment has changed.
Mental-health care has changed.
Our understanding of individual autonomy has changed.
Yet India's law concerning euthanasia remains largely governed by constitutional judgments and judicially created safeguards rather than a comprehensive parliamentary statute dealing with the full range of issues.
Doctors, patients, families and courts continue to face difficult questions about suffering, autonomy, dignity and the limits of medical intervention.
Those questions deserve a clear legal framework.
What this petition asks the Government of India and Parliament to do
I call upon the Government of India to establish an independent national commission on euthanasia and assisted dying and begin a transparent public consultation.
The commission should include:
• Constitutional and criminal-law experts
• Physicians
• Psychiatrists
• Palliative-care specialists
• Medical ethicists
• Disability-rights experts
• Mental-health professionals
• Patient representatives
• Caregivers and families
The commission should examine:
1. India's constitutional principles concerning dignity, liberty, autonomy and the right to life.
2. The Supreme Court's jurisprudence, including Common Cause and Harish Rana.
3. The arguments for and against physician-administered euthanasia.
4. The arguments for and against physician-assisted dying.
5. International frameworks, particularly Belgium and the Netherlands.
6. The medical evidence concerning severe treatment-resistant physical and psychiatric conditions.
7. The risk of coercion, abuse, discrimination and inadequate access to healthcare.
8. The safeguards necessary to distinguish enduring medical suffering from an acute suicidal crisis.
9. Whether, and under what conditions, psychiatric illness should ever be included within a future legal framework.
Following this process, Parliament should publicly debate the evidence and determine whether India should enact comprehensive legislation governing euthanasia and assisted dying.
This is ultimately about dignity, autonomy and compassion
Some suffering is visible.
Some suffering is not.
A person can look completely healthy while fighting an illness every day.
A person can spend years trying to get better while everyone around them assumes that another treatment, another doctor or another year will finally solve the problem.
A family can watch someone they love suffer for years and feel completely powerless.
These are not easy questions.
There are legitimate concerns about abuse, mistakes, coercion, disability discrimination and the possibility that someone could die when treatment or support might still have helped them.
Those concerns must be taken seriously.
But the answer to a difficult question should not be silence.
It should be evidence, safeguards, accountability and an honest national debate.
Belgium and the Netherlands have chosen to confront this issue through law.
India should examine whether, and under what safeguards, it should do the same.
Sign this petition
I am asking the Government of India and Parliament to begin a serious national examination of:
Physician-administered euthanasia.
Physician-assisted dying.
End-of-life autonomy.
And a legal framework under which severe, enduring and genuinely treatment-resistant psychiatric disorders can qualify for euthanasia or physician-assisted dying when all statutory eligibility requirements and enhanced psychiatric safeguards have been satisfied.
Please sign this petition and ask India to begin this debate.
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Petition created on 21 September 2026