A 39-year-old Bengaluru start-up founder allegedly murdered her four-year-old son in Goa and travelled to Karnataka with his body before she was caught.
Suchana Seth, CEO of artificial intelligence start-up Mindful AI Lab, was arrested in Karnataka's Chitradurga on Monday with her son's body in a bag. She allegedly killed her young son in an apartment in north Goa's Candolim.
The motive for the shocking crime is not known yet but police suspect the CEO's estranged relationship with her husband as a possible reason behind the killing. Police said Ms Seth, who is a native of West Bengal, was unhappy about her ongoing divorce with her husband Venkat Raman.
Ms Seth checked into the Sol Banyan Grande in North Goa's Candolim with her son on Saturday, while her husband, who works as an AI developer, was in Indonesia. On Monday, she checked out of the room alone and asked the hotel staff to book her a taxi to Bengaluru. She insisted on taking a taxi despite being advised to take a flight, the staff said.
The staff noticed that her son was missing. After she left, the housekeeping staff also noticed bloodstains in the apartment she had occupied.
They informed the Goa police, who called the taxi driver and asked to speak to Ms Seth. When she was asked about her son, she claimed he was with a friend and gave an address, which turned out to be fake.
The police then called the driver again. Speaking in Konkani to make sure Ms Seth could not understand, the Goa police asked the driver to divert the cab to the nearest police station in Chitradurga, around 200 km from Bengaluru.
When the cab driver did as told, the Chitradurga police arrested Ms Seth and the body of her son was found inside the bag she was traveling with. Police have asked Ms Seth's husband to return to India.
Ms Seth was taken back to Goa for questioning and produced in court. She has been remanded in police custody for six days.
According to the LinkedIn page of Mindful AI Lab, Suchana Seth was among the top "100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics for 2021". Her own LinkedIn account says she was a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Centre and a data scientist with over 12 years of experience in mentoring data science teams, and scaling machine learning solutions at start-ups and industry research labs.
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