Economic Times reported that Hemanth Kappanna might seem like just another victim of corporate restructuring, a foreign worker whose skills were no longer needed.
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But Kappanna, an engineer born in India who was laid off by General Motors in February, changed automotive history.
In 2013, he was part of a team of engineering students whose research helped expose Volkswagen's decade-long conspiracy to lie about its diesel cars' emissions.
The German carmaker has paid $23 billion so far to resolve criminal charges and lawsuits in the US, and $33 billion overall.
Kappanna's role as a hero in bringing the VW scandal to light didn't protect him when his supervisor called him into a conference room in February.
Kappanna, who had lived in the US for 17 years, joined GM in December 2014 after finishing his doctorate.
The supervisor said it was nothing personal, Kappanna, 41, recalled last week.
His severance package consisted of two months' pay and a one-way ticket to India.
He was one of about 4,000 GM workers laid off in what the firm called a "strategic transformation".
He said that "They let me go.†Unable to find a job before his work visa's 60-day grace period expired, Kappanna, single and with no kids, returned to Bengaluru, his hometown, a few days later.
Kappanna was a graduate student at West Virginia University, which is known for its research on auto emissions.
The director of his programme asked him to complete a grant application from the International Council on Clean Transportation.
The council, a nonprofit, wanted to test the emissions of German diesel cars sold in US.
Kappanna was pursuing a doctorate and his proposal helped the university win a USD 70,000 grant.
Kappanna and two other students, Marc Besch from Switzerland and Arvind Thiruvengadam from India, were chosen to do the fieldwork.
The three didn't know it, but they were gathering evidence of a crime.
They documented that VW polluted more than regulations allowed .
Their research did not directly accuse VW of wrongdoing.
But the data it included raised red flags for regulators.
Kappanna said he is proud of his role in unmasking VW's wrongdoing.
But, he also wonders whether he was seen within GM as overly zealous about compliance and friendly to regulators.
GM said this week that Kappanna's dismissal "was not related to emissions compliance concerns or related issues." That he was not a US citizen also played no role, GM said. ■