New Delhi: Allegations against her estranged husband and his advocate, the ongoing divorce proceedings with her husband, and a mention that he and his lawyer were pressurising her to hand over the couple’s four-year-old son to him — these are a few things that are mentioned in a crumpled tissue paper recovered by police from 39-year-old Suchana Seth’s luggage, and suspected by police to have been written by her, ThePrint has learnt.
Seth, CEO of Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence startup The Mindful AI Lab, stands accused of smothering her four-year-old son in the service apartment of a Goa hotel, where she had checked in Saturday.
She was apprehended by police Monday and has been sent to six days police custody. The AI expert has denied killing her son, according to sources in Goa Police.
The note from her luggage, almost in shreds when it was recovered, has been sent for forensic examination and Seth’s handwriting sample has been taken, sources in Goa Police told ThePrint. According to investigators, it is “key evidence” in establishing the motive behind the murder.
“The note is cryptic. She has alluded to the fact that the husband has been forcing her to give up the child and other allegations against the husband and his advocate. The note has some four to five lines. It appears that it was written with an eyeliner,” a Goa Police source said.
Seth was arrested Monday after staff at the Goa hotel became suspicious and alerted police. Sources in Goa Police had earlier told ThePrint that the accused was “triggered” by a court order last month allowing her estranged husband the right to visit their child. According to sources in the Goa Police, the boy’s father, P.V. Venkat Raman, had also visited his son a week before the alleged murder.
In August, sources said, Seth had accused Raman of domestic abuse and of being physically violent with her and their son, following which a restraining order was issued against him. Raman has refuted the allegations. On 13 December, a family court granted him rights to visit and spend time with the boy every Sunday.
The couple got married in 2010 and filed for divorce in 2020 — a year after the child was born.
‘Seth has been elusive’
According to the doctor who conducted the postmortem, the four-year-old was smothered to death by a pillow, or some cloth, and not with bare hands.
Following the recovery of two Benadryl bottles from the Goa service apartment, police are now probing if Seth had administered the child cough syrup before “killing him” and suspect that the alleged murder may have been “pre-planned”.
According to Goa Police sources, Seth has been elusive and denied the killing. “She keeps saying the child died in his sleep and she wanted to take him to Bengaluru to her house,” the source said.
According to the police, Seth had tried to inflict injuries on her wrist after she allegedly killed the child.
As ThePrint reported earlier, sources had said that Seth had allegedly contacted her husband a day before the alleged crime asking him to meet the child. However, she did not turn up and went to Goa on 6 January with the boy.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)