An Indian nurse who was in a vegetative state for 42 years after being raped by a hospital ward attendant while on duty has died.

Aruna Shanbaug was left with severe brain damage and paralysed after her rape in a Mumbai hospital in 1973.

She was kept alive by being fed through her nose but developed pneumonia six days ago, a hospital spokesman told the BBC.

Her case sparked a debate in India about its euthanasia laws.

"Shanbaug died at 8:30am today. She was admitted to the intensive care unit and put on ventilator support," a spokesman at Mumabi's KEM hospital said.

"My broken, battered baby bird finally flew away. And she gave India a passive euthanasia law before doing so," journalist and author Pinki Virani, who wrote Aruna's Story, a book on the nurse's plight, told the BBC.

Shanbaug was 25 years old when she was sodomised by the hospital cleaner who strangled her with metal chains and left her to die on 27 November 1973.