Harish, 31, died on Tuesday at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), becoming the first person in India to be permitted passive euthanasia under a Supreme Court order.

Harish Rana was granted permission for passive euthanasia by the Supreme Court earlier this month. (Express photo)

He had been in a coma since 2013, after he fell from a fourth-floor balcony in Chandigarh as a B.Tech student. For 13 years, he remained in a permanent vegetative state, sustained by artificial nutrition through a feeding tube and, at times, oxygen support.

The last rites began just after 9 am at the Green Park cremation ground in South Delhi. Harish’s body was laid on a platform covered with rose petals, and his family gathered around. His younger brother, Ashish Rana, performed the rituals, accompanied by his sister Bhavna.

“The whole family was there. Everyone bid farewell to the soul… In death, as in the years preceding it, the family sought to frame the moment not as an ending but as a transition. There is a journey for a new beginning,” Sister Lovely said, describing the spiritual message shared during the cremation.

The Rana family’s association with the Brahmakumaris ha

s deepened over time. Ashok Rana, who lived in Delhi for almost two decades before moving to Raj Empire Society in Ghaziabad a few years ago, became a regular at the nearby Brahmakumaris centre. “He comes every day,” Sister Lovely said.

Sources at AIIMS told The Indian Express on Wednesday that the family donated Harish’s corneas and heart valve.

For more than a decade, the life of the family had revolved around the room in which Harish had lain. He needed constant care — feeding through a gastrostomy tube four times a day, tending to bedsores, physiotherapy, and turning his body to prevent further injury.

The financial burden was heavy. After retiring from a catering job, Ashok began selling sandwiches and burgers at a local cricket ground on weekends to boost the family’s income. His wife, Nirmala, remained by Harish’s side for much of each day.

In 2024, the Delhi High Court rejected the family’s plea to withdraw life support. The Supreme Court initially declined relief but allowed them to return. When they did, the court issued a landmark order on March 11, 2026, permitting the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, extending the principles laid down in the 2018 Common Cause v. Union of India judgment.

Passive euthanasia allows the withdrawal of life support, letting death occur naturally with palliative care. For Harish, this meant the removal of nutrition through a PEG tube under medical supervision at AIIMS, where he had been taken on March 14.

On Tuesday evening, that process came to an end.