Indian woman suing Woolworth’s over toxic mushrooms

An Indian woman living in Australia's New South Wales state is suing Australian supermarket giant Woolworths, alleging it sold her toxic mushrooms.

Rajvir Kaur, 25, says she consumed the mushrooms, which made her sick. She had persistent vomiting and diarrhoea on 24 April, 2014, but by the time she could be admitted to a hospital, she had multiple organ failure and required an emergency liver transplant to save her life.

The mushrooms that Kaur ate were identified as the deadly death cap mushrooms, that looked much like normal mushrooms but release deadly toxins into the body after consumption.

Woolworths, which denied responsibility, said an investigation carried out in 2014 did not find any traces of the toxic fungi and that the mushrooms might have been bought from somewhere else.

Kaur said, the mushrooms were bought from the Woolworths about two weeks before consumption, which made it unlikely that the same batch of mushrooms was present when the investigation took place.

Rajvir who required follow-up surgery on her bowel, was in a coma a week, which was followed by hospitalisation of four months.

Doctors had to give her a liver donated by a patient with a different blood type, which means she has to take 20 different medications every day to stop her body rejecting the organ.

Another complication of the case is that Rajvir had no record of the transaction as she said she paid cash on the day in question, saying she did not have any reason to keep the receipt.

However, the evidence was strong that death cap mushrooms were the source of the poisoning.

According to Rajvir's solicitor, Sally Gleeson of law firm Turner Freeman, the medical records clearly showed that right from the start, hospital staff identified death cap mushrooms as the source of the toxins in her body.

Further, besides the day-to-day fight to remain healthy, Rajvir was now faced with the battle stay in the country.

Rajvir is on a bridging visa and might be forced to return to India if the Immigration Department were to reject her application for permanent residency.

She said if she was forced to go back to India with these new complications, she would die.

She added she would need medical care for the rest of her life, which she would not be able to get in India.