A 39-year-old startup founder and CEO hailing from Bengaluru faced grave charges on Monday, accused of murdering her four-year-old son in a service apartment situated in North Goa's Candolim.
The shocking revelation unfolded when a member of the housekeeping staff stumbled upon a bloodstain during the apartment's cleaning process, shortly after Suchana Seth had checked out that Monday morning.
Strangely, investigators are grappling to discern a motive behind this heinous crime. Acting on an alert from the Goa Police, Suchana was apprehended at the Aimangala police station in Karnataka's Chitradurga district.
On Monday, a police team from Calangute was en route to Karnataka late on Monday, intending to secure custody of Suchana Seth and transport her back to Goa on transit remand.
Inspector Paresh Naik of Calangute police station said that Suchana had provided a Bengaluru address upon checking into room 404 at Candolim’s Hotel Sol Banyan Grande on Saturday. Staff at the hotel informed the police that despite suggestions for a more cost-effective and convenient flight back to Bengaluru, Suchana insisted on road travel. Consequently, the hotel arranged a local taxi for her.
North Goa SP Nidhin Valsan reported that upon receiving information about the bloodstain around 11 am, a police team rushed to the hotel and scrutinized CCTV footage, revealing Suchana leaving the service apartment without her son. Inspector Naik contacted the taxi driver, instructing him to put Suchana on the phone. When questioned about her son's whereabouts, Suchana claimed to have left him at a friend's house in Fatorda. However, the provided friend's address turned out to be falsified.
Subsequently, Naik called the taxi driver again, this time conversing in Konkani and urging him to visit a nearby police station without arousing suspicion from the passenger. By this point, the taxi had entered Chitradurga district. The driver deftly navigated to Aimangala police station, where an officer inspected the car, revealing the gruesome discovery of the child's lifeless body in a bag.
Suchana Seth, identified as a data scientist, is the founder and CEO of the tech consultancy 'The Mindful AI Lab.' Her LinkedIn profile denotes her as an Artificial Intelligence ethics expert with a substantial 12-year background in data science and the startup industry. Furthermore, her profile proudly mentions being part of the esteemed 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics List and having served as a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Centre at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts.
Meanwhile, the doctors have said that the boy was smothered to death by his mother and there were no struggle marks on the body.
Hiriyur Taluk Hospital's administrative officer Dr Kumar Naik said, "He [the child] was strangled to death or what we call smothering. Either a cloth or a pillow was used. The child died due to strangulation."
"It doesn't look like the child was strangulated using hands. It looks like a pillow or some other material was used. The Rigor mortis had resolved in the child," he added.
"Usually in India, rigor mortis resolves after 36 hours but in this child's case, there was no Rigor mortis. So, it has been more than 36 hours since his death," he further said.
The exact time of the death of the boy could not be determined as it had been 36 hours since his death at the Goa apartment, he said.
