An Indian court 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 case filed by the father of a woman who died after receiving AstraZeneca’s Covishield COVID-19 vaccine.
The High Court of Judicature at Bombay set a Nov. 17 deadline for the responses and scheduled a hearing for the same day.
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 ₹1000 crores (approximately $126 million).
According to the lawsuit, Lunawat “lost his elder daughter. His loss can neither be explained in words nor can be compensated in terms of money. Only some sort of success can be done by awarding compensation.”
Defendants in the case include Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Serum Institute; Bill Gates, in his role as partner in the development of the Covishield vaccine; 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.
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A lawyer representing Gates reportedly appeared before the High Court to accept the notice.
Snehal Lunawat was a 33-year-old doctor and senior lecturer at the SMBT Dental College & Hospital in Maharashtra State. According to her father, she was compelled, as a health worker, to get the Covishield vaccine.
On Jan. 28, 2021, Snehal received the Covishield vaccine, which is produced by the Serum Institute. Her father claims his daughter had received assurances the vaccines were entirely safe and posed no risk to her health.
However, her father stated, Snehal developed severe headaches and vomiting while attending a workshop just days after receiving the vaccine, 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 elapsed 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.
According to the lawsuit, these adverse reactions have been found to be related to the AstraZeneca and Covishield COVID-19 vaccines in some countries.
The lawsuit names the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) for its role in helping to speed up the process of manufacturing and delivering up to 100 million doses of Covishield for distribution in India and various developing countries.
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In the lawsuit, Lunawat “blamed the Government and others for misrepresenting the facts about the COVID-19 vaccine by making false claims about its safety and ‘forcing’ medical practitioners to take the vaccine.”
Aside from the named defendants, the lawsuit also calls for action to be taken against social media platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, and mainstream media for their role in disseminating the “false narratives” and for allegedly suppressing information about the adverse effects, inefficacy or failure of the vaccines.
The family of the deceased is also seeking damages against Indian public health bodies and officials, Poonawalla and Bill 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 Serum Institute of India is not only the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer by number of doses produced and sold, but it also produces more than half of the world’s vaccines that are administered to babies.