MUMBAI, Jan. 14 -- The Bombay High Court has directed the central authorities to consider the compensation claim of a staff nurse's family for Rs.50 lakh under the Covid warriors' scheme, after noting that the district collector had rejected the claim solely because an RT-PCR report confirming the deceased had Covid-19 was not produced. A division bench of justice Arun Pednekar and justice Vaishali Patil-Jadhav observed that there was overwhelming evidence to show that the nurse, Manda Gaikwad, was Covid-positive at the time of her death. According to the petition filed by the nurse's husband, Machindra Gaikwad, Manda had been working as a nurse at the Civil Hospital in Ahilyanagar since 1993 and had also served during the Covid-19 pandemic. In March 2021, she was posted at the Covid Care Centre set up at Mahatma Phule Agricultural University in Rahuri, where she was infected with the virus. She tested positive for Covid-19 on April 30, 2021, and died on May 5, 2021 due to the infection. Soon after her death, Machindra Gaikwad filed a claim with the district collector seeking Rs.50 lakh compensation under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana for Covid warriors. In September 2022, the district collector rejected the claim on the ground that Machindra had not submitted an RT-PCR test report showing that his wife was Covid-positive at the time of her death. When he approached the high court again the judges observed that her health reports clearly indicated a Covid-19 infection, and that her death certificate mentioned the cause of death as a consequence of Covid. "In this situation, because the petitioner could not submit the laboratory report certifying that the deceased was tested positive for Covid-19, the claim of the petitioner cannot be rejected," the court said, adding that there was enough evidence on record, particularly the cause of death certificate, that the deceased passed away due to covid-19....