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By:

Akhilesh Sinha

25 June 2025 at 2:53:54 pm

Driving Change

Once trapped by poverty and abuse, Sufina found freedom behind the wheel — and now helps women travel safely across Delhi. The woman who once felt unsafe is now ensuring women travellers get home securely from Delhi’s airport, day or night. Among those providing this round-the-clock service is Sufina, a cab driver with the “Driven by Women for Women and Families” initiative. Sufina, who now offers peace of mind and safe journeys to female passengers, was once deeply troubled herself. But she...

Driving Change

Once trapped by poverty and abuse, Sufina found freedom behind the wheel — and now helps women travel safely across Delhi. The woman who once felt unsafe is now ensuring women travellers get home securely from Delhi’s airport, day or night. Among those providing this round-the-clock service is Sufina, a cab driver with the “Driven by Women for Women and Families” initiative. Sufina, who now offers peace of mind and safe journeys to female passengers, was once deeply troubled herself. But she refused to give up. Pulling herself out of hardship, she not only became self-reliant but also an inspiration for marginalised women in society. Partnering with the Sakha-Azaad Foundation, Sufina has scripted an extraordinary story. Sakha Consulting Wings launched this women-driven cab service for female passengers under the brand  Women with Wheels . All drivers, including Sufina, received training in driving and self-defence through the Azaad Foundation. Born Into Hardship Living in East Delhi’s Anand Vihar, Sufina was married to a daily wage labourer at just 16. By 18, she was a mother. Poverty was crushing; meals were often scarce. Desperate to escape this misery, she began searching for a way out. That was when she met a Sakha volunteer who suggested driver training. It became the turning point in her life. The road ahead, however, was anything but easy. Breaking Free Sufina was stepping into a male-dominated world, and it frightened her at first. Yet her hunger for financial independence gave her courage. In the early days, she faced strong opposition from both her husband and parents. Before leaving for work, her husband would beat her and lock her inside the room to stop her from attending training. But Sufina refused to surrender. Teaming up with her mother, she found a way out. After her husband left for work, her mother would unlock the door. Before he returned, Sufina would quietly slip back home to avoid more conflict. After completing her training, she worked as a private driver for nearly two years, continuing the same routine. As her earnings, confidence and independence grew, so did her assertiveness — and with it, her husband’s suspicion. One day, when he raised his hand again, Sufina fought back. She told him she would not tolerate it anymore. Shocked, he stopped. He never hit her again. Driving Change Sufina believes the turning point in her marriage came when her husband fell seriously ill. She admitted him to a private nursing home and paid for his treatment from her own savings. From then on, he began trusting her and valuing her work. Though the struggle had been painful, Sufina emerged stronger. She now asks a powerful question:  Why must a woman endure so much just to prove herself? Today, she is determined that her daughters should grow up with freedom and choice. In her community, she is respected and admired. Local girls and women see in her a path to self-reliance and dignity. The woman who once lived in fear now helps other women travel without it — and in doing so, she is driving change far beyond Delhi’s roads.

Dignified Exit

For a country where debates on life and death are often filtered through religion, morality and medical caution, the Supreme Court’s recent order permitting passive euthanasia for a 32-year-old man in a permanent vegetative state marks a moment of quiet but profound significance. In allowing the withdrawal of life support for Harish Rana, who has remained in a coma for more than 13 years, the apex court has nudged the country closer to recognising what modern medicine has long complicated: the boundary between prolonging life and prolonging suffering.

 

Rana’s case is tragic in its simplicity. A football-loving engineering student at Panjab University, he suffered severe head injuries after falling from the fourth floor of his paying guest accommodation in Ghaziabad in 2013. Since then, he has lived in a state that medicine describes as “permanent vegetative” - a condition where the body survives but consciousness is absent. For more than a decade, his family cared for him at home, sustained by hope but bound by the harsh reality that recovery was medically improbable. Their plea to withdraw life support eventually reached the Supreme Court.


The court directed that the procedure be carried out under careful medical supervision and in a manner that preserves the patient’s dignity. More significantly, the judges urged the government to enact comprehensive legislation on passive euthanasia, acknowledging that the legal framework remains incomplete.

 

The ruling builds upon a gradual legal evolution. India first confronted the question of mercy killing in the 2011 Aruna Shanbaug case. Shanbaug, a Mumbai nurse who had been brutally assaulted and left paralysed with severe brain damage, remained in a vegetative state for over four decades. The Supreme Court refused to allow passive euthanasia in her case because the petition had been filed by a journalist rather than a close relative. Yet the judgment cautiously opened the door by permitting passive euthanasia in exceptional circumstances under judicial oversight.

 

A clearer framework arrived in 2018 in the ‘Common Cause v. Union of India’ judgment. A five-judge constitutional bench declared that the right to die with dignity is intrinsic to the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution. It also laid down guidelines for passive euthanasia, requiring decisions to be vetted by two independent medical boards after consultation with the patient’s family.


Rana’s case is the first time the Supreme Court has directly authorised the withdrawal of life support under this evolving doctrine. The ruling therefore transforms abstract constitutional principles into practical precedent.


Many fear that legalising euthanasia might expose vulnerable patients to coercion or economic pressure from families struggling with medical costs. The judiciary has therefore emphasised procedural safeguards like multiple medical boards, judicial scrutiny and the centrality of family consent.


India has long celebrated the sanctity of life. The law is now beginning to acknowledge another truth: that dignity, too, has its own claims at the end of life.

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