The Bombay High Court has ruled that the absence of a positive RTPCR report cannot be the sole ground to deny compensation under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY) to the family of a health worker who died during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A division bench of Justices Arun Pednekar and Vaishali Jadhav of the Aurangabad bench passed the order on January 9, directing the Ahilyanagar district collector to process the insurance claim of one Machindra Gaikwad, whose wife, a nurse serving since 1993, died in May 2021 while on duty at a government quarantine centre.
The court observed that while the deceased’s RTPCR test came back negative, other medical reports including CT scan results, oxygen saturation levels, and the death certificate clearly pointed to COVID-19 as the cause of death.
“Merely because the petitioner could not submit a report certifying that the deceased tested positive for COVID-19, his compensation claim cannot be rejected,” the bench stated.
The judges emphasized that the RTPCR result alone is not conclusive, especially when other medical evidence convincingly establishes COVID-19 infection and causation of death. “The RTPCR report indicating that the deceased tested negative for COVID-19 is not the sole criteria to decide whether the person was COVID-19 positive or died due to the infection,” the court said.
Earlier, the district collector had rejected Gaikwad’s claim for the ₹50 lakh insurance under PMGKY, citing the lack of a positive RTPCR result.
The High Court has now directed the collector to forward the compensation claim to the appropriate authority, holding that the deceased was indeed COVID-19 positive at the time of her death based on available medical records.
Gaikwad’s wife, employed as a nurse at the Ahilyanagar civil hospital, was assigned to COVID-19 duty during the second wave of the pandemic. She contracted respiratory complications and eventually succumbed to cardio-respiratory failure linked to pneumonitis and coronavirus infection, according to hospital records.
He had submitted medical documentation establishing that she was in constant contact with infected patients and had died while performing official duties at the quarantine centre.
