4 min readFeb 13, 2026 01:25 PM IST
First published on: Feb 13, 2026 at 01:25 PM IST
By Soutik Banerjee
Jaahnavi Kandula was killed in the United States by a speeding police vehicle driven recklessly by an on-duty cop who was responding to a drug overdose call in 2023. The issue drew widespread international condemnation when body cam footage emerged of the officer laughing about the accident and mocking the value of Jaahnavi’s life.
Having arrived at a settlement amounting to nearly Rs 262 crore, payable by the administration of the city of Seattle, their attorney, Erika Evans, in a statement, said, “Jaahnavi Kandula’s life mattered. It mattered to her family, her friends and to our community.”
The important takeaway from this horrific experience is the value placed on innocent human life, both in terms of compensation as a limited means for closure, as well as fixing accountability for the death of a civilian. The amount of Rs 262 crore, or approximately $23 million, is staggering, with most of it reportedly covered by the city’s insurance.
One cannot help but wonder why India does not place a similar premium on human life, striving to achieve a higher standard of living and greater systems of accountability in the process.
Newspapers in India are rife with stories of custodial deaths, torture and caste atrocities committed by public officials, as well as death by negligence, administrative apathy and incompetence. Recently, the horrific botched rescue in Noida of a young man left to drown and die in a ditch created by administrative callousness and corporate lethargy drew widespread outrage.
Multiple cases of infrastructure projects collapsing and claiming civilian lives have been reported, and despite clear orders banning manual scavenging and other activities of a similar nature, administrative creativity in nomenclature allows for the record to reflect hundreds of deaths during hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks over the last five years.
The legal regime for victim compensation in India, in most such cases, broadly speaking, will result in compensation between Rs 2 and 5 lakh, and in exceptional cases may extend to Rs 10 lakh. Those with the privilege to pursue litigation for compensation in writ courts may secure a little more, though exemplary compensation remains alien to our jurisprudence and is awarded only in the rarest of rare cases, with shockingly heinous crimes, like in the case of Bilkis Bano, which led to a Supreme Court direction for the State of Gujarat to pay Rs 50 lakh.
Indian case law still looks at the cases of Nilabati Behara, Chandrima Das, Rudul Shah, etc**,** which cemented the principle of state accountability for the actions of its agents. They were important first steps. The need of the hour is for a cultural reboot of our socio-political appreciation for the value of life, and for the law to empower that change with exemplary compensation and damages. The loss of innocent lives at the hands of state actors, whether in police action or criminal administrative indifference, must be compensated in a similar vein to what the city of Seattle is paying Jaahnavi’s family.
This is not to monetise the tragedy, but as Erika Evans said, it is to remember that the human life that was lost had value for her family and the community. It is time for the law and our courts to view our lives as being more valuable, and to make exemplary compensation or damages the norm to fix greater accountability. That will go a long way in forcing the state machinery to be more responsible and respectful of civilian life, which is often bargained away for too little.
The writer is a Delhi-based lawyer
One cannot help but wonder why India does not place a similar premium on human life, striving to achieve a higher standard of living and greater systems of accountability in the process. 
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