Suchana Seth, the CEO of a Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence start-up, who is custody for allegedly murdering her four-year-old son, is said to have been frustrated since her divorce and was also trying to prevent her son from meeting his father and her ex-husband, sources in Goa Police told News18.
The heinous incident reportedly occurred on the intervening night of January 7 and 8 in a service apartment-hotel located in North Goa’s Sinquerim.
Seth allegedly disposed of the child’s body in a bag, loaded it into a taxi she had ordered from the hotel she was staying at, and asked the driver to head towards Bengaluru.
News18 has learnt that Seth had been mandated by the court after her divorce proceedings in 2020 to allow her ex-husband to meet the child on Sundays. She had reportedly not been honouring the arrangement. The child was born in 2019 after the couple married in 2010, an officer close to the investigation said.
What Happened in Goa?
According to North Goa Superintendent of Police, Nidhin Valsan, Suchana Seth made a call to the hotel staff asking them to provide her with a taxi to travel to Bengaluru as she had an urgent matter to attend to. The hotel staff, while trying to help her with her request, also tried to advise her that flying back to Bengaluru would be more economical and convenient. However, Seth is said to have been insistent that she wanted to travel by road and asked them to arrange it.
“She immediately checked out, put her luggage in the taxi arranged by the hotel. After the check-out, when the housekeeping staff went to the room, they found red stains on the bed, which they suspected was blood. They informed the local Calangute police and PI Paresh, along with his team, reached the hotel. Prima facie it looked like a (blood) stain, so attempts were made to contact Seth,” SP Valsan said.
Speaking to News18, SP Valsan said the investigation is in a very nascent stage and more details on why and how the crime was committed are expected after interrogation.
As part of the investigation, the police, while checking the CCTV footage of the hotel, found that Suchana Seth had entered the hotel with a child, but checked out alone.
“We contacted the lady through the phone of the driver and asked her where the child was. She claimed that she had left him at the residence of a friend in Margao. On insisting for the address, she shared an address in Fatorda. On checking, we found that the address was fake,” Valsan further stated.
The Goa Police also lauded the presence of mind of PI Paresh who communicated with the driver in Konkani and asked him to drive the car to the closest police station in the area he was in.
What Happened in Karnataka?
After taking the taxi, Seth is said to have told the driver to take her to Bengaluru as fast as he could. They crossed the border to Karnataka and were near Hiriyur when a call was placed by PI Paresh to the driver.
“We found that they were at the time in Chitradurga, near the Aimangala Police station. We requested the Aimangala police officials to check the car and the luggage and they found the child’s dead body in it. A cognizable case under IPC was filed based on the complaint of the manager of the hotel that Seth had stayed, and an arrest was made,” said Valsan.
Chitradurga SP Dharmendra Kumar Meena told News18 that the child’s body has been kept in Hiriyur for post-mortem, and the police are also awaiting the arrival of the father of the child.
“The father has been working abroad, and he is expected to arrive in Hiriyur. We detained her based on the Goa Police request and found the body of the child,” Meena said.
The accused is now in the custody of the Goa Police after she was taken on a transit remand from Chitradurga, Karnataka, on Monday.
Questions to be Answered
A Goa Police official working closely with the investigation said there are many loopholes in the case.
“The child was found with a head injury, the throat was also slashed. If the heinous act had been done in the room, there would have been a lot more blood in the room,” the police official told News18.
Another question that is also being raised is why there was no blood found in the lobby of the hotel if the body was lugged across the hotel lobby, the official added. A thorough investigation is being conducted and post-mortem details are also awaited, he further said.
Who is Suchana Seth?
Suchana Seth founded The Mindful AI Lab, an AI-tech startup, in 2019. Before venturing into entrepreneurship, she served as a senior data scientist at Boomerang Commerce, contributing to the creation of data-driven products for price optimization and intelligence. With two patents to her name, she also had been in the role of a senior analytics consultant at Innovation Labs’ Data Sciences Group.
Seth had been an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Centre, focusing on the ethical aspects and governance of Artificial Intelligence and Responsible Machine Learning in Boston, Massachusetts.
She holds a Master’s degree in Physics, specializing in Plasma Physics with Astrophysics from the University of Calcutta in 2008, a Post Graduate Diploma in Sanskrit from the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, and a Bachelor’s degree in Physics (Honours) from Bhawanipur Education Society College, Kolkata.
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