New Delhi: The immediate “trigger”, according to police sources, was a court order granting her estranged husband visiting rights to meet her four-year-old son every Sunday. And so — wanting “to keep the boy away from his father” — Suchana Seth, the 39-year-old CEO of The Mindful AI Lab, took the child to Goa and “smothered him to death” in a hotel room there.
Seth was arrested by Goa Police from Karnataka’s Chitradurga Monday, while on her way back to her city of residence, Bengaluru, after they were alerted by the hotel staff about the “missing” boy. The child’s body was recovered from a bag in her luggage.
“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. However, we cannot say at this point if the murder was pre-planned,” a source in Goa Police told ThePrint.
The source added: “Their [Seth and her husband’s] divorce proceedings had reached the final stage”.
The child’s body has been sent for post mortem and Seth has been taken back to Goa for questioning, it is learnt.
Goa Police sources told ThePrint that prima facie, it appears that the child was “smothered to death” and that he has marks on his neck to suggest the same. The sources added that it is believed that the accused tried to also 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 was found in her room by the hotel staff. The blood stains, along with the missing boy and her urgency to leave the hotel, caused the staff to get in touch with the police, sources said. She was sent to six days police custody Monday.
“She 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 the blood stains,” superintendent of police (North Goa) Nidhin Valsan said.
While Seth, an expert in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) is originally from West Bengal, she had been currently living in Bengaluru. Her estranged husband is from Kerala, but living in Jakarta, said sources, adding that the couple had married in 2010 and filed for divorce in 2020.
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Blood stains & missing child
According to police sources it was Seth’s urgency to leave the hotel in a taxi and absence of her son which didn’t sit well with the hotel staff.
“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.
The SP added: “They informed the local police station immediately. When police teams caught up with her, they enquired about her son, but she said she was with a friend. However, the address she mentioned [of the friend] was found to be fake.”
The local police then asked the driver to bring the accused to the nearest police station in Chitradurga, which is some 200 kms from Bengaluru. She was detained there. Upon searching, the child’s body was found in a bag in the luggage, said sources.
‘An AI expert’
According to her LinkedIn profile, Seth, an AI expert with over 12 years of experience, is a founder of The Mindful AI Lab and has been associated with organisations like the Mozilla Fellowships and also been a fellow at the Berkman Klein Centre at Harvard University.
She has also been a research fellow at the Raman Research Institute and holds patents in natural language processing, her profile adds. The 39-year-old also has the qualifications and experience of a data scientist.
According to her profile, Seth had completed her Masters in Physics from the University of Calcutta, in 2006-2008. Before that she graduated with honours in Physics from Bhawanipur Education Society College, Kolkata and also holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Sanskrit from the Ramakrishna Mission Institute Of Culture.
Her last Instagram post is from October last year — an image of her deceased son playing with a fish.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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