New Delhi: The four-year-old boy allegedly killed by his mother in the service apartment of a Goa hotel was “strangled with a cloth or a pillow”, the post-mortem has revealed.
Dr. Kumar Naik, who reportedly conducted the autopsy Tuesday, was quoted in the media as saying that the child was not strangled with bare hands, but a pillow, cloth or “some other material”. The administrative officer of the Hiriyur Taluk Hospital in Karnataka’s Chitradurga also reportedly said that rigor mortis had resolved in the child’s body.
“Usually in India, rigor mortis resolves after 36 hours but in this child’s case, there was no rigor mortis (stiffening of the body muscles due to chemical changes in their myofibrils). So, it has been more than 36 hours since his death,” news agency Press Trust of India (PTI) quoted Naik as saying. Naik also reportedly said that there were no signs of blood loss or marks of struggle on the child’s body.
On Monday, Suchana Seth, the 39-year-old CEO of The Mindful AI Lab, was arrested by Goa Police from Karnataka’s Chitradurga, while on her way back to her city of residence, Bengaluru, after police were alerted by the hotel staff about her “missing” son. The child’s body was recovered from a bag in her luggage and sent for post mortem.
According to reports, Seth has denied killing her son, claiming he was already dead when she woke up from sleep.
Police sources had earlier told ThePrint that the immediate trigger for the alleged murder was a court order granting her estranged husband visiting rights to meet her son every Sunday. “Initial investigation has revealed that the woman didn’t want her husband to meet the son. It appears that she had planned to take the boy away,” a source in Goa Police said.
According to a PTI report, police found two bottles of cough syrup — one big and one small — in the room where Seth allegedly killed her son, indicating it might have been a premeditated murder.
“We are examining the possibility of the woman giving a heavy dose of cough syrup to the child before killing him,” an officer close to the probe in the case was quoted as saying,
Inquiries with the service apartment’s staff have reportedly revealed that Seth asked them to buy her a small bottle of cough syrup. “She may have carried the bigger bottle,” the officer said.
The boy’s father, who police sources had told ThePrint lives in Indonesia, has reportedly returned to the country. The four-year-old’s body has since been handed over to his father, it is learnt.
‘Bitter divorce’
Superintendent of police (North Goa) Nidhin Valsan had earlier told ThePrint that Seth “had checked into the hotel with her four-year-old son Saturday and had made the booking through Airbnb. After she checked out, the hotel staff went to clean up the room and found blood stains,” there.
“On the intervening night of Sunday and Monday she checked out of the hotel and told the hotel staff to arrange a cab for her to Bengaluru. The hotel staff told her that flights will be cheaper, but she insisted on a taxi. She checked out and kept the luggage in the taxi. After she checked out, the hotel staff went to clean the room and found the blood stains,” said Valsan.
According to police sources, it was Seth’s urgency to leave the hotel in a taxi and the absence of her son when she left, along with the blood stains in her room, which pushed them to alert the police.
“When police teams caught up with her, they enquired about her son, but she said he was with a friend. However, the address she mentioned [of the friend] was found to be fake,” said Valsan.
The local police then asked the taxi driver to bring the accused to the nearest police station in Chitradurga and upon searching, the child’s body was found in a bag in the luggage, said sources. Seth was later sent to six days police custody.
According to police sources, it is believed that the accused had also tried to cause self-harm, but wasn’t successful. It is probably blood stains from the cuts seen on her wrist in videos being circulated of her in media that were found in her room by the hotel staff.
An expert in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), Seth had married the boy’s father had married in 2010, but the couple filed for divorce in 2020, said police sources, adding that “divorce proceedings had reached the final stage”.
The accused had reportedly also filed complaints of domestic violence against her estranged husband last August. While her husband had denied the accusations, a restraining order was issued against him.
Seth had also reportedly accused him of abusing her and her son and provided “medical evidence” to support her claims.
According to media reports, the Bengaluru CEO also demanded an alimony of Rs 2.5 lakh per month, saying her estranged husband had an annual income of Rs 1 crore.
The court had asked him to pay Seth an “interim maintenance” of Rs 20,000 per month, from September and granted him right to visit their son every week, which incensed her, claimed police sources.
The next hearing in the divorce case was reportedly scheduled for 29 January.