Bhubaneswar: The Indian Consulate in San Francisco termed the handling of Indian student Jaahnavi Kandula’s death in a road accident as “deeply troubling” and sought action against those involved in the case. “We have taken up the matter strongly with local authorities in Seattle & Washington State as well as senior officials in Washington DC for a thorough investigation & action against those involved in this tragic case,” the mission said in a post on X.
India has urged the US to conduct a thorough investigation into the bodycam footage of a Seattle cop joking about Jaahnavi ‘s death after she was hit by a speeding police car. The young student was killed in January after being hit by a police vehicle being driven by Officer Kevin Dave at nearly 120 kmph on the way to a report of an overdose, the Seattle Times newspaper reported.
Kandula was a master’s student at Northeastern University’s Seattle campus.
In a video released by the Seattle Police Department on Monday, another cop can be heard joking and laughing while discussing the accident. In the clip, Seattle Police Officers’ Guild Vice President Daniel Auderer, in a call with the guild’s president, can be heard saying, “She is dead” before bursting out into laughter and calling Kandula “a regular person”. He further said, through bursts of laughter, “Yeah, just write a check. Eleven thousand dollars.”
The clip ends with him saying: “She was 26 anyway, she had limited value”, getting her age wrong because she was 23.
“We have taken up the matter strongly with local authorities in Seattle & Washington State as well as senior officials in Washington DC for a thorough investigation & action against those involved in this tragic case,” the mission said in a post on X.
