The Newcastle resident could never have foreseen the horrific consequences of that simple, home-cooked meal.

Somehow, the button mushrooms in the dish had become contaminated with a number of death cap mushrooms, a highly poisonous fungus that looks similar to a normal mushroom but releases deadly toxins into the body if consumed.

About 1am the next morning – April 24, 2014 – Rajvir, her housemate and her mother became violently ill, suffering repeated vomiting and diarrhoea.

"We just thought food poisoning," Rajvir told Fairfax Media. "You're sick for a while, vomiting, and eventually it goes away."

But the poisoning did not go away.

By 5.30pm that night she was in the emergency department of Canberra's Calvary Hospital – her local hospital at the time – and two days later, suffering multiple organ failure, she had an emergency liver transplant to save her life.

"I'm lucky to be alive," Rajvir said.

"The doctors said my body is strong – I survived a lot of hours without a liver."

The young woman required follow-up surgery on her bowel, was in a coma for six or seven days, and hospitalised for a further four months.

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

Now the 25-year-old is suing Woolworths, which she says was responsible for selling her mushrooms laced with death caps.

The supermarket giant is denying responsibility, pointing to an ACT Health and ACT Policing investigation last year that found no evidence of death cap mushrooms at the suburban store in question, or any other store.

"As reported last year, ACT Health and ACT police found there was no evidence that these mushrooms were sold at Woolworths," a spokeswoman told Fairfax Media. "We have nothing else to add."

But Rajvir is adamant about the source of the toxic fungi.

"They don't believe me – they say [the] death cap didn't come from Woolies [that they] could be from anywhere," she says.

"But I'm not stupid. Everyone knows that you don't pick mushrooms from the forest. The mushrooms came from Woollies – I remember."

Complicating the investigation into Rajvir's allegations was the fact that, according to her, the mushrooms were bought from Woolworths about two weeks before her mother cooked them.

It is therefore unlikely the same batch of mushrooms was present when the investigation took place.

A further complication is that Rajvir has no record of the transaction because she says she paid cash on the day in question and had no reason to keep the receipt.

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

"The medical records clearly show that, right from the start, hospital staff identified death cap mushrooms as the source of the toxins in her body," Rajvir's solicitor, Sally Gleeson of Turner Freeman says.

In addition to the day-to-day fight to remain healthy, Rajvir is now also facing a battle to stay in the country.

The 25-year-old is on a bridging visa and may be forced to return to India if the Immigration Department does not accept her application for permanent residency.

She cannot work and is being supported by the local Sikh community.

"If I am forced to go back to India I will die," she said.

"I'm going to need medical care for the rest of my life and I can't get it there. This is the place where I was poisoned and I think I [should] be able to stay."

At the time of the investigation by health authorities, ACT chief health officer Paul Kelly said the poisoning of Rajvir and her loved ones was "an isolated incident" .

"There have been no other recent reports of death cap mushroom poisoning in the ACT," Dr Kelly said.

"We'd like to acknowledge the swift action taken by Woolworths in response to the initial information about the source of the mushrooms."