Meghana Kandula is all of 24, but her life is stuck in limbo, she says. Memories of her sister Jaahnavi Kandula haunt her. But what she cannot really endure are the prying glances and questions from neighbours, relatives and friends who consider her the heir to a fortune – $29 million or Rs 260 crore to be precise – which Seattle City awarded the Kandulas for compensating the wrongful death of Jaahnavi three years ago.
The compensation was announced on February 12 this year.
In January 2023, Jaahnavi Kandula – then a 23-year-old student who was pursuing a master’s degree in information systems at the Seattle campus of Northeastern University – was fatally struck down, while crossing a street, by a speeding police vehicle driven by officer Kevin Dave, who was responding to a drug overdose call.
Inside the one-storey home, their mother’s cries were audible. (Express photo by Nikhila Henry)
Dave was driving at 74 miles per hour on Dexter Avenue, which was a 25 miles-per-hour zone. On the night of the accident, officer Daniel Auderer, who was called in to administer a drug recognition test to Dave, was allegedly captured on body camera joking about Kandula’s death. He allegedly told Seattle Police Officers Guild president Mike Solan that Kandula’s life was “of limited value”, that she was “an ordinary person”, and that the city should “just write a cheque”. The Seattle police department fired both Dave and Auderer.
“It was the first time that I heard of racism – when my sister was killed. Would they have laughed about an American being killed in a road accident?” Meghana said, sitting on a beige sofa in her modest maternal home in Adoni in Andhra Pradesh’s Kurnool district. The entrance to this home has a sign which says “Jaahnavi’s Smriti Aavas”. A GoFundMe campaign run by Jaahnavi’s friends and well-wishers paid for this house, where Meghana, their mother, G Vijayalakshmi, and her grandparents, G Suri Babu and G Uma Devi, now live.
Inside the one-storey home, their mother’s cries were audible. Meghana said, “My mother is an independent woman, and Jaahnavi and I learnt a lot from her.” It was the mother who brought up the two girls after being separated from her husband, Srikanth Kandula. Srikanth, who used to be a railway police constable, died of a cardiac arrest just two days before the Seattle settlement was announced. “He was estranged, but he was still family,” Meghana said.
In seeking justice for Jaahnavi, they were together. They sued the Seattle Police Department and the city of Seattle together. But the money will be transferred to just the mother, now that the father has passed away. Meghana’s maternal uncle, Gundapuneedi Naveen Chowdari, said, “The money will not bring her back, but it has fixed accountability.” Chowdari kept tabs on all that transpired in the US after Jaahnavi’s death through friends and relatives.
Jaahnavi left for the US on a student exchange programme in 2021 after the family took a Rs 60 lakh education loan.
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Her closest friends and family said they are now struggling to keep their lives private. “Rumours are flying that we have already got the money and that we have invested. Some say we have donated money to the development of our hometown. Then there are those who say that Meghana got marriage proposals from high places because of the money. All of it is false,” Chowdari said.
After Jaahnavi’s death, it was almost as if the family had forgotten how to live. “I miss the fights we used to have over clothes. She was a fashionista,” said Meghana, who, after completing her BBA degree, stopped studying. “I have not thought of my future for the past three years,” she said.
In the three-room house they live in, Meghana has kept a diary that Jaahnavi’s US classmates and friends had sent them. Going through the pages replete with photographs of Jaahnavi, she said, “There, look at her, she is kayaking.”
Jaahnavi’s closest friends in Adoni recalled how she would video-call them on WhatsApp to show them where she lived and whom she interacted with. One of her friends said, “On the call, she used to show her room, her college, her surroundings and friends.”
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Another friend called her “an end-to-end encrypted person”. “You could tell her anything in the world, and she would keep it a secret. She was like that with all of us, making us realise who we are as we interacted with her,” the friend said. In photographs of Jaahnavi, there were very few where she wasn’t smiling.
The family said they are being hounded by those who want a cut of the compensation. “It happens in any family… Those who have not spoken to us for long are now trying to reach out. We are retreating into our own shell, it feels like,” Chowdari said. The family has not yet decided what to do with the funds, expected to reach them in six months or so.
Meghana said, “We come from a very poor background. Our forefathers were farmers, and my mother was a private school teacher who used to earn Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 per month. Now we have all this money and people just think that we have got it easy, without realising that it has come at a very dear cost – the life of my sister.”
According to Jaahnavi’s friends, the money has brought them and the family “chaos” and not closure.
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For the family, the fight for compensation was a crusade for justice and accountability. According to Associated Press, Seattle’s city attorney Erika Evans said at the close of the case, “Jaahnavi Kandula’s death was heartbreaking, and the city hopes this financial settlement brings some sense of closure to the Kandula family… Jaahnavi’s life mattered. It mattered to her family, her friends and our community.”
Now that the legal battle is over, Meghana is unsure of what comes next: “I used to want to go to the US for a better life, just like Jaahnavi did. But I am not sure of it anymore. I don’t think I will ever be the same person.”
