The TOI correspondent from Washington: A $29 million award to the family of Jaahnavi Kandula, a 23-year old student from India who was killed in a road accident in Seattle on a cold night in January 2023, will not bring her back to life. But in a gracious gesture and empathetic language that accompanied the record settlement, the American justice system this week upheld dignity and value of a foreign student, implicitly rebuking the dehumanization of immigrants in an increasingly MAGA-fevered country where they are seen as "economic threats" and "cultural outsiders,"
Kandula, the only daughter of a police constable and a school teacher in Andhra Pradesh, was crossing a street in Seattle, where she was a master’s candidate at Northeastern University, when she was hit by a police cruiser driving at 74 mph in a 25-mph zone. Police Officer Kevin Dave was responding to a "priority one" overdose call, only "chirping" his siren at intersections instead of running it continuously. The impact threw her nearly 100 feet and she died shortly thereafter.
