VIJAYKUMAR HARIRAM SAHU Vs. STATE OF MAHARASHTRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Rule. Counsel for the Respondents waive service. By consent, the Rule is made returnable forthwith. The writ petition is taken up for hearing and final disposal, by consent and on the request of learned counsel.

(2.) A delicate and sensitive issue arises before the Court in this case. It concerns the regulation by the State of the transplantation of human organs. The case traverses medicine, social ethics and law and has profound human implications. The noted German philosopher, Hegel, is attributed with the thought that "genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong but conflicts between two rights." Whether the First Petitioner should or should not be allowed to donate a kidney necessary to save the life of the Second Petitioner is an agonising question falling in the same genre. Both the Petitioners are men of modest, if not humble means. One seeks to donate his kidney to the other, stating that they are bound by a bond of attachment and affection, arising from their family dwellings in Madhya Pradesh. The donor is a single parent with two daughters to look after, both below eighteen. The donee is suffering from end stage renal disease. The Authorization Committee and the Appellate authority have declined approval.

(3.) The Petitioners have in these proceedings under Article 226 of the Constitution of India challenged orders passed by the Authorization Committee constituted under the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 1994 ('the Act') and an order passed in appeal by the Appellate Authority of the State Government.