Mumbai:
A week after the Supreme Court rejected activist Pinki Virani's euthanasia plea for Aruna Shanbaug, her sister Shanta Nayak says she wants Aruna to live.
"We don't want her to get mercy killing. She will die when she has to," Shanta tells NDTV.
Seventy five-year-old Shanta can barely walk and lives with her daughter in a chawl in Central Mumbai. The house is only a few minutes from the hospital where Aruna is lying in an irreversible vegetative state.
Yet, Shanta has not seen her sister for two decades.
"I used to go in the afternoons to see her and come back at nights, and then come back home and work which became very difficult. Once my children got married, I couldn't go," she says.
Aruna was 14 years younger to Shanta, an age gap that meant they were not close.
The two sisters met only occasionally until the attack on Aruna when Shanta started visiting her as often as she could.
"I hoped for a long time that she would improve, but she didn't. I told my brother that I find it difficult to walk. He said there is no need, there are three nurses looking after her.
"KEM hospital had asked me to take her home. I told them to give me a quarter to live in, her monthly salary, a nurse and a doctor. They didn't say anything after that," says Shanta.
"I feel sorry for her, but what can I do? If I go now, they'll force me to bring her back. Where will I keep her? I live in someone else's house," she adds.
The Supreme Court has said that in absence of family support the staff members of KEM, who have looked after Aruna for 38 years, should be considered her next of kin.
Shanta too says by leaving Aruna in the loving hands of the KEM staff, the family probably unwittingly did the best they could for Aruna.