A court in India has ordered Bill Gates, the Indian government, and the Serum Institute of India — the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer — to provide formal responses relating to a lawsuit filed by the father of a 33-year-old doctor who died after receiving AstraZeneca’s Covishield Covid vaccine.
In a lawsuit filed in February, Dilip Lunawat alleged his daughter, Snehal Lunawat, died March 1, 2021 of complications arising from the Covishield vaccine. He is seeking compensation of approximately $126 million.
Gates was named as a defendant in the case due to his role in funding the development of the Serum Institute of India's Covishield vaccine, the lawsuit said.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation partnered with the Serum Institute of India to accelerate the process of manufacturing and delivering 100 million doses of the vaccine.
Other defendants in the case include Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Serum Institute; the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare; the Indian State of Maharashtra; India’s drug controller general; the former director of the All India Institute of Medical Science and others.
The High Court of Judicature at Bombay set a Nov. 17 deadline for the defendants to respond to the lawsuit and scheduled a hearing for the same day.
A lawyer representing Gates reportedly appeared before the High Court to accept the notice.
According to the lawsuit, Snehal developed severe headaches and vomiting while attending a workshop just days after receiving the Covid shot, resulting in her hospitalization. There, doctors said that she was suffering from bleeding in the brain, low platelet count, and blood clot formation.
After 14 days without her condition improving, Snehal’s family transferred her to another hospital, where she died eight days later.
Snehal experienced a “rare blood-clotting event,” a complication that resulted in her blood platelet count decreasing due to increased bleeding in her brain, the lawsuit says.
According to the lawsuit, these adverse reactions have been found to be related to the AstraZeneca and Covishield Covid vaccines in some countries.
Snehal, being a medical student, was required to take the Covid vaccine at her college in Nashik on Jan. 28 last year as she came under the category of health worker. She was a doctor and a senior lecturer at SMBT dental college and hospital at Dhamangaon in Maharashtra.
The lawsuit claims that Snehal had received assurances the vaccines were entirely safe and posed no risk to her health.
As reported by The Defender, another case, Yadav v. Maharashtra, also before the Bombay High Court, was filed in late 2021 by the mother of the deceased, Shri Hitesh Kadve, who was “unwillingly” vaccinated on Sept. 29, 2021, and died that same day due to an adverse reaction from the Covishield vaccine.
The family of the deceased is also seeking damages against Indian public health bodies and officials and Gates, referred to in the complaint as a “mastermind” and as a “habitual offender of mass murder by vaccination in conspiracy with Government officials.”
The Indian Bar Association — an informal group of Indian lawyers (the Bar Council of India is India’s official bar association) — lists several other recent legal developments requiring Indian government and public health officials to respond to claims regarding deaths allegedly resulting from COVID-19 vaccines.
India’s Supreme Court on Aug. 29 issued notice to the country’s central government, requesting a response in the case of two children said to have died as a result of vaccine adverse effects.
On Aug. 10, the high court of the Indian state of Kerala ordered the Indian government to immediately develop guidelines for the issuance of compensation to the victims of vaccine injuries and side effects, with the government telling the court that such policies are currently in the process of being formulated.
Earlier this year, the Kerala High Court requested a response from the Indian government in the case of a 19-year-old woman who died allegedly as a result of the vaccine.
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