REVIEW PAPER Euthanasia: Global Scenario and Its Status in India Raghvendra Singh Shekhawat 1 • Tanuj Kanchan 1 • Puneet Setia 1 • Alok Atreya 2 • Kewal Krishan 3 Received: 18 June 2017 / Accepted: 3 July 2017 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017 Abstract The legal and moral validity of euthanasia has been questioned in dif- ferent situations. In India, the status of euthanasia is no different. It was the Aruna Ramachandra Shanbaug case that got significant public attention and led the Supreme Court of India to initiate detailed deliberations on the long ignored issue of euthanasia. Realising the importance of this issue and considering the ongoing and pending litigation before the different courts in this regard, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India issued a public notice on May 2016 that invited opinions from the citizens and the concerned stakeholders on the proposed draft bill entitled The Medical Treatment of Terminally Ill Patients (Protection of Patients and Medical Practitioners) Bill. Globally, only a few countries have leg- islation with discreet and unambiguous guidelines on euthanasia. The ongoing developments have raised a hope of India getting a discreet law on euthanasia in the future. Keywords Euthanasia Á Aruna Shanbaug Á Indian law Á Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) & Raghvendra Singh Shekhawat drraghavendrasinghshekhawat@gmail.com 1 Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Jodhpur, India 2 Department of Forensic Medicine, Nepal Medical College Teaching Hospital, Kathmandu, Nepal, India 3 Department of Anthropology, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India 123 Sci Eng Ethics DOI 10.1007/s11948-017-9946-7