Goa: The taxi driver who drove Suchana Seth – Bengaluru CEO accused of murdering her son – from Goa to Karnataka has revealed shocking details of his 10-hour-long journey. He told the media that the accused remained silent throughout the journey. She had asked him to carry her 'heavy' bag from her service apartment in Goa to the cab and refused to take items out to make it lighter when he requested.
After being alerted by the service apartment's staff, the Goa police contacted Ray John, who diverted his cab to a police station in Karnataka. The police found her son's body inside the bag.
"When I reached the service apartment, she (Seth) asked me to carry her bag from the reception to the taxi. It was heavy. I asked her whether we could remove some belongings from the bag to make it lighter. But she refused. We had to drag the bag to the boot of the car,” the cab driver told PTI.
John said there was a huge traffic jam at Chorla ghat section on the Karnataka-Goa border. He told her it would take six hours to clear the road and that they should head to the airport. "But she insisted on continuing by road,” said the driver, stressing that he felt something was off.
{{/usCountry}}John said there was a huge traffic jam at Chorla ghat section on the Karnataka-Goa border. He told her it would take six hours to clear the road and that they should head to the airport. "But she insisted on continuing by road,” said the driver, stressing that he felt something was off.
{{/usCountry}}As he received the call from the Goa police, he started searching for a police station on Google Maps.
“The Calangute police told me to search for a nearby police station and take her there. I tried searching on Google Maps and GPS but didn’t find any. I even looked for cops at toll plazas but there were none,” he said.
He knew he would have to trick her into believing nothing was amiss. To buy more time, he stopped by a roadside restaurant. He found out that a police station was just 500 metres away.
“We were one and a half hours away from Bengaluru. I drove to the Aiyamangala police station (in Chitradurga district of Karnataka), while a Calangute police official remained on line with me on the phone,” he said.
Also read: Bengaluru CEO Suchana Seth messaged husband before killing her son: Details
The police inspector came out 15 minutes later. Suchana Seth, however, remained calm and kept sitting in the car, he said.
The police searched her bag and found the child’s body in it.
"When police asked her whether it was her son. She calmly said ‘yes’,” he added.
She was arrested and handed over to the Goa police.
Suchana Seth, the CEO of startup Mindful AI Lab, had come to the service apartment in Goa on January 6 with her son. On January 8, she claimed her son was staying with a relative. She asked for a cab to go to Bengaluru from Goa. The staff later alerted the police after they found blood spots in the apartment.
The postmortem of the deceased revealed the boy was smothered by either a pillow or a cloth. The police also found two cough syrup bottles that could have been used to make the victim unconscious.
With inputs from PTI