Undercounting of Covid deaths: New birth & death records strengthen parents' legal case

The new data from the country's official record of births and deaths that suggests undercounting of deaths during the pandemic has given a ray of hope to the parents of children who may have died due to the side effects of Covid vaccine.

The parents, who are fighting a legal battle, will use the government data in the court, they said.

According to the data from the Civil Registration System (CRS), about 2.1 million more deaths were registered in 2021 - the year that witnessed the deadly Delta wave - compared with 2020.


"This report confirms what we have witnessed in our circles and in news items and social media over last few years, and it gives hope to us that this authoritative data from Census Department validates our arguments and buttresses our case with one more irrefutable evidence," said Venugopalan Govindan, one of the petitioners in the case. He lost his daughter after she was administered with Covid vaccine.

The next date of hearing is on May 15.

As per the data, the spike in deaths is about six times the official Covid death toll for 2021, which was pegged at 330,000 that year.

Besides, the Sample Registration System (SRS) data, released by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, on May 7 showed that the number of people who died in the country every year from 2007 to 2019 ranged from 8.1 million to 8.6 million.

The SRS, one of the largest demographic surveys in the world, contains estimates of various demographic, fertility and mortality indicators based on the data collected through the SRS sample survey.

However, in 2021, more than 10.2 million deaths were registered in the country - 2.1 million more than the 8.115 million deaths registered in 2020, the first year of the pandemic.

Govindan said the new data confirms the bitter truth vaccine victims such as him and many keen observers have known and seen empirically since 2021. "There have been so many excess deaths since the start of the vaccination drive," he added.

Significantly, Covid was rampant in the country (and globally) in 2020, and India had its first Covid case as early as January 2020. In fact, the sero surveys conducted by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in 2020 showed rapid spread of Covid in the country.

"It is very important to note that we did not have a corresponding all-cause mortality in the country in 2020, confirming the very low IFR (infection fatality rate) of Covid as has been known and confirmed in worldwide data by then," Gopalan said.

He said the CRS data published by the Census Department is of utmost importance and should be studied in detail, as nothing has the finality as death.

The parents have been fighting the legal battle since 2022. In their petition, they have said that excess deaths were negligible before vaccination, but they spiked after vaccination started.