The Supreme Court has held that a COVID ex-gratia claim cannot be refused merely because there was no formal test. The Patna High Court applied that principle but drew its limit: the relaxation presupposes some reliable material showing the death was caused by COVID. Here no test was done, the treating hospital’s own prescription said nothing about COVID, and the death certificate recorded the death as having occurred at home. On that record, the Court held, the foundational fact was not made out.
Patna: The Patna High Court has dismissed a writ petition seeking the payment of Rs 4 lakh in ex-gratia compensation for a death attributed to COVID-19, holding that while the absence of a formal COVID test report is not by itself fatal to such a claim, the claimant must still place on record reliable material establishing that the death occurred on account of COVID [Jai Prakash Narayan v. The State of Bihar and Others].
Justice Alok Kumar found no merit in the petition and dismissed it.
The background
The petitioner’s father died in May 2021, during the second wave of the pandemic. According to the petition, he was admitted to a private hospital in Chapra after the government hospital expressed its inability to admit him, and tests at private diagnostic centres were said to have detected a severe coronavirus infection, in the course of treatment for which he died. The petitioner said the hospital had refused to issue a discharge certificate, and that he had made repeated representations to the Civil Surgeon, the District Magistrate and the Health Department between 2021 and 2023, all without result.
His claim for the ex-gratia amount had been rejected by a three-member District Enquiry Committee on the ground that no RT-PCR, antigen or TrueNat test had been conducted, and that the material on record did not establish that the death had occurred on account of COVID.
The State’s case
The State, relying on the report of the District Epidemiologist and of the Enquiry Committee, submitted that the petitioner had neither produced the registration or medical prescription of the government hospital nor shown that any RT-PCR, antigen or TrueNat test had been conducted on the deceased, and that the claim rested only on a CT-scan report from a private institution, which does not confirm COVID infection.
It further pointed out that the prescription of the private hospital disclosed no COVID infection or apprehension of it, and that the death certificate recorded the place of death as the residence of the deceased, not the hospital. On that material, the Committee had rejected the claim.
The principle, and its limit
The Court began from the settled proposition, laid down by the Supreme Court in Gaurav Kumar Bansal v. Union of India, that the absence of a formal COVID test report is not by itself conclusive, and that the State cannot deny ex-gratia assistance solely on such technical grounds where other requisite documents otherwise establish the claimant’s eligibility.
But it read that relaxation together with its own premise:
“The said principle, however, presupposes the existence of reliable corroborative material establishing that death occurred on account of Covid-19, which, on the facts noted above, does not stand demonstrated before the Committee.”
The Court was careful to distinguish the two kinds of case. Where the fact of death due to COVID is not in dispute and the rejection rests purely on the technical ground that the test was done at an unauthorised laboratory, the Supreme Court’s relaxation applies and the claim cannot be refused. But this, the Court held, was not such a case: here the material raised a genuine dispute about the foundational fact itself, since no test was conducted, the treating hospital’s own prescription was silent on COVID infection, and the death certificate recorded the place of death as the deceased’s residence rather than the hospital.
In those circumstances, the Court held that a claimant must establish that the deceased had contracted COVID by placing on record the relevant COVID test report or a COVID death certificate, and that this had not been done. Finding no merit, it dismissed the petition.
Why it matters
The judgment marks the boundary of a well-known and humane relaxation. In the wake of the pandemic, the Supreme Court recognised that families who had lost members to COVID often could not produce a clean test report, because tests were unavailable, delayed, or done at private or unapproved labs in the chaos of the second wave, and it held that such families could not be denied the modest ex-gratia payment on that account alone. That principle has rightly been applied generously.
What this order clarifies is that the relaxation goes to the form of proof, not to the fact to be proved. It excuses the absence of a particular document; it does not excuse the absence of any reliable indication that the death was caused by COVID at all. The distinction the Court drew is between a case where everyone agrees the death was from COVID and only the paperwork is imperfect, and a case where the very cause of death is genuinely in doubt. In the first, the claimant wins despite the missing test. In the second, the claimant must supply something, a test report, a COVID death certificate, or other reliable corroboration, to establish the foundational fact.
On the facts recorded, three features pointed the same way: no test of any kind, a treating hospital record silent on COVID, and a death certificate locating the death at home. It is the convergence of those, rather than the missing test alone, that took the case outside the relaxation. Had the hospital record shown COVID treatment, or had the death certificate recorded a COVID-related death, the outcome might well have followed Gaurav Kumar Bansal instead.
The human dimension should not be lost. A family that has spent years making representations for a compensation it believes is due, only to be told the proof falls short, is a hard outcome, and the Court did not pretend otherwise. But ex-gratia schemes of this kind operate on a defined eligibility, and the Court’s task was to apply the eligibility as the Supreme Court has framed it, not to relax it further. The dismissal turns on evidence, not on the technicality that the earlier rejection had cited, and it leaves the eligibility criteria where the apex court set them.
Case Title: Jai Prakash Narayan v. The State of Bihar and Others [CWJC No. 9460 of 2024]
Bench: Justice Alok Kumar, High Court of Judicature at Patna
Reserved on: August 25, 2026 | Pronounced on: September 11, 2026
Appearances: Advocate Dhananjai Kumar Singh for the petitioner. The Advocate General for the State.
Status: Writ petition dismissed. Ex-gratia claim rejected for want of reliable proof that the death was due to COVID-19.