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Woman smothered son amid marital discord
Founder of an AI startup in India allegedly killed her 4-year-old son and hid his body in a taxi trunk. The woman was arrested while attempting to flee.
A 39-year-old founder of an artificial intelligence startup allegedly smothered her four-year-old son with a pillow at a resort in Goa and then stashed his body in the trunk of a taxi she hired to escape from Goa to Bengaluru, before getting arrested en route, police said on Tuesday, giving details of a grisly crime that has sent shock waves coursing through the country.
Suchana Seth, who founded the Bengaluru-based firm The Mindful AI in 2020 after stints as a fellow at Harvard University and The Raman Research Institute, was sent to police custody for six days by a judicial magistrate in Mapusa, North Goa. Police pointed to ongoing marital discord and an acrimonious custody battle with her husband, currently in Indonesia but on his way back to India, as two of the possible triggers behind the gruesome murder of her son.
“Prime facie, she has said that she is not on good terms with her husband and there are divorce proceedings which are at the final stages. She said there is a recent court order concerning the custody of her child that she was not happy with,” said North Goa superintendent of police Nidhin Valsan.
The two got married in 2010, but according to police their relationship was strained since the birth of their child in 2019. Divorce proceedings began in 2022. A family court allowed the father of the child to see him between 10am and 4pm every Sunday, officers said.
The Bangalore Family Court was scheduled to hear her husband’s plea seeking visitation rights on January 10.
Seth was nabbed in Karnataka’s Chitradurga district, around 160-km from Bengaluru, on Monday after police tracked her down in a dramatic operation that spanned six hours and two states, and involved officers calling up the driver of the taxi she was in, speaking to him in Konkani, and guiding him to drive to the nearest police station.
Also Read | Suchana Seth, accused of killing 4-yr-old son, was upset about custody battle: Police
A post-mortem examination conducted Hiriyur in Chitradurga district on Tuesday evening confirmed that the four-year-old, whose name has not been disclosed, was killed by smothering with a pillow, said police officers aware of the matter. “Besides the smothering, no other weapon was used to kill the child,” said a police officer familiar with the ongoing investigation.
Bloodstains found by the police on the floor and a bandage on her left arm could also point to an attempt by Seth to slash her wrists, the officer quoted above said, adding that the investigation was in the preliminary stages.
The murder
Goa police have registered a case under sections 302 (murder) and 201(destruction of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code, and section 8 of the Goa Children’s Act (Child Abuse and Trafficking) based on a complaint by Gagan Subhash Gambhir, the manager of the Sol Banyan Grande hotel in North Goa’s Candolim where she was staying.
Seth – whose company is a technical consultancy firm — asked the court for permission to contact a lawyer and said that she would not make any statement unless accompanied by them. She did not respond to questions from the media and is currently lodged at the Calangute Police Station.
Also Read | Goa murder: Why did Suchana Seth ‘kill’ 4-year-old son? Where is her husband?
The 39-year-old professional was named in the 100 brilliant women working in AI ethics in 2021.Her social media activity showed ties to India’s responsible AI ecosystem, revealed that she frequently spoke about the important of responsibility and accountability in AI and machine learning, and had completed stints as a fellow at Berkman Klein Institute at Harvard University between 2017-19 and Mozilla Open Web Fellow in New York in 2016-17.
Seth and her son checked into the resort on January 6 and had reservations till January 10.
Police say she murdered her son the night of January 7. Shortly after midnight on January 8, Seth allegedly called the hotel staff and said that she wanted a taxi arranged to return to Bengaluru. “The hotel staff suggested that she travel by flight which would be cheaper. But she insisted that she wanted to go by taxi after which the hotel arranged a Toyota Innova and she left the hotel at 1 am on January 8,” Valsan said. The distance between Candolim and Bengaluru is around 600 kilometres, and takes up to 11 hours by road.
The chase
The next day, January 8, witnessed a dramatic sequence of events. In Candolim, hotel cleaning staff — already suspicious because Seth left alone without any sign of her son who she had come with — noticed bloodstains in the room and tipped off the Calangute Police. This was around 10am.
Personnel from the police station went to the hotel, and confirmed that the red stains prima facie did seem like blood. The Calangute Police then contacted the driver, and spoke to her as she was en route.
“She told the police that she had left her son with a friend at Margao for a few days. Police insisted on an address, which the woman then gave… Showing presence of mind, the personnel immediately called Fatorda police station, who went to the address provided and saw it was fake,” Valsan said.
The police dialled the cab driver again, and this time spoke to him in Konkani. “They asked him to report to the nearest police station. He drove to the Aimangala police station without her getting wind of where she was going, and she was stopped there by the Chitradurga Police. The body of the child was found stuffed in a luggage bag in the trunk,” said an officer attached to the Calangute police station, requesting anonymity.
Valsansaid that even before the car was to reach the station, the station in-charge of Calangute Police had spoken to his counterpart in Chitradurga, who, in turn, spoke to the local superintendent of police, who was his batchmate in the IPS and a close friend.
A senior police officer at Aimangala police station in Karnataka, 400 kilometres away from Candolim, said that the Toyota Innova that was ferrying Seth drove into the premises at around 3pm.
“The cab driver who came into the station first and gave the phone to me. There was another policeman on the other end who briefed us about the case and asked us to detain her. When we took her into custody, there was no resistance,” said the officer, who requested anonymity.
This Karnataka police officer said that Seth was asked again where her child was, but she remained elusive. There was also a bandage on her left wrist, and asked about this, she remained quiet again. “The police officer on the line asked us to check the luggage. We opened a suitcase in the trunk of the car and found the body inside. There were no visible sings of injury on the body, but some bleeding around the nose,” he said.
Goa Police then arrived in the late evening to take custody of Seth and were told about the bandage on her left arm. “She barely said anything during her custody here, and said she did not speak Kannada,” the officer cited above said.
Valsan said that the body of the child was preserved at government hospital in Chitradurga.
Police said they were yet to establish whether Seth also attempted to take her own life in the absence of custodial interrogation. “We are attempting to establish the manner and circumstances of her son’s killing,” who said, adding that they had found no evidence of a weapon used thus far.
Staff at the resort refused to speak to the media and barred entry to everyone except the hotel’s guests.
