New Delhi, March 16 -- Thirteen years is a long time to hold on to hope. For the Rana family of Ghaziabad, it was also long enough to know when to finally let go.

In what legal and medical circles are now calling a watershed moment for India, the Supreme Court has authorised the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment for Harish Rana - a young man who has not been conscious since a devastating fall from a building in 2013. He was a student when the accident happened. The brain injuries he suffered that day were catastrophic and irreversible, leaving him in a permanent vegetative state, wholly dependent on assisted feeding and continuous medical intervention to stay alive.

For more than a decade, his parents stood by him. They cared for ...