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The Supreme Court on Thursday (November 13, 2025) reserved for orders a petition seeking compensation for ‘After Effects From Immunisation’ (AEFI) deaths allegedly caused by COVID-19 vaccination.
A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta heard the writ petition filed by Rachna Gangu and Venugopalan Govindan who alleged their daughters died due to adverse effects of COVID vaccination. The court order would also decide a plea to constitute a committee to enquire into AEFI instances.
The court also considered a separate petition filed by the Centre against a Kerala High Court order to formulate a policy to identify and compensate for AEFI deaths related to COVID vaccination.
Over 1,100 AEFI-linked deaths have been reported in the country.
‘Forced on public’
Senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, appearing for the parents, said the vaccine was forced upon the public, even on children, while the official version remained that taking it was “voluntary”. Non-immunisation was even criminalised at the time, Mr. Gonsalves said. Suppression of information about the after-effects of the vaccine was institutionalised, he submitted. Mr. Gonsalves said healthy people, like the petitioners’ daughters, aged 18 and 20, developed severe brain clots after the vaccination and died.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for an intervenor, supported the plea for an independent probe into AEFI instances, while Mr. Gonsalves said he had amended his petition to report more of such cases.
The Bench, however, asked Mr. Gonsalves about the source of his data showing the deaths were AEFI-related. The court asked if he had any empirical basis to his allegations. The court criticised the petitioners’ assumption that the Indian government covered up the actual number of AEFI deaths while countries such as the U.K. were transparent with their figures. “You do not trust data given by your government, but trust the U.K. government?” the court asked the petitioners.
Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati, for the Centre, countered that the government cannot be held liable to pay compensation for deaths due to administration of COVID-19 vaccines.
Earlier in an affidavit, the Centre had maintained that “holding the state directly liable to provide compensation under the narrow scope of strict liability for extremely rare deaths occurring due to AEFIs from the use of vaccines may not be legally sustainable”.
Ms. Bhati said the government had made “substantial efforts” to ensure a safe and effective vaccination programme during the pandemic.
“If beneficiaries had suffered physical injury or death from an AEFI, appropriate remedies in law were available to them or their families. They could approach civil courts to claim damages for negligence, malfeasance or misfeasance. Such claims may be determined on a case-by-case basis in an appropriate forum,” the government has argued.
The government affidavit said a total of 219.86 crore doses of COVID 19 vaccines were administered in the country till November 19, 2022. A collective 92,114 AEFI cases (0.0042%) were reported, of which 89,332 (0.0041%) were minor instances and 2,782 cases were serious and severe AEFIs (0.00013%). Ms. Bhati said the total deaths reported were 1,171.
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