In a heart wrenching event that sharply drawn national attention, a woman techie has brutally killed her 4-year-old son in midst of a prolonged dispute with her husband. The merciless woman had then staged a drama to elude legal proceedings and her short-lived drama has come to an end after she was detained by the police, who later found that she was carrying her son's body. 

The accused woman has been identified as Suchana Seth of Bangalore and what is more shocking is that Seth was a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a start-up Artificial Intelligence (AI) firm called 'The Mindful AI Lab'. According to reports, Suchana Seth was arrested from Chitradurga in Karnataka on Monday night under the charges of killing her son. 

Though the details behind her son's death remained in dark initially, the autopsy report has now exposed the horror the child went through in the hands of his mother. Seth and his son were vacationing in Goa last week during which she murdered her son. They were staying at a service apartment in Candolim in North Goa between January 6 and 8. She checked into the apartment with her son on January 6 and she stayed there for a couple of days. 

During the morning hours of January 8, Seth checked out of the apartment and hired a cab to reach Bangalore. Ironically, Seth exited the apartment alone and when the apartment staffers went to clean the room where she stayed, they were shocked to find blood stains on a towel. This has apparently sparked suspicion about the whereabouts of his son and with a blood-stained towel in a hand as an evidence, the apartment management immediately informed the Goa police. 

They told the police that Suchana Seth was seen carrying an unusually heavy bag and her child was not seen with her. Based on the information, the police rushed to the apartment and sifted the surveillance cameras, when Seth had already started her drive to Bangalore. It has been reported that the police had then traced the cab and reached out to the driver. 

The police called the driver and spoke with Seth. When she was enquired about her son, the woman techie claimed that he was with a friend and gave an address. Nevertheless, the address turned out to be fake after which the police again called the cab driver and asked him to divert the cab to the nearest police station in Chitradurga, Karnataka and the officials had also alerted the police in Chitradurga about the incident and instructed them to investigate Suchana Seth. 

To Suchana Seth's shock, the cab reached the Chitradurga police station following which she was detained by the police officials. After detaining her, the police questioned her and inspected her bag and startled to find her 4-year-old son's body inside the bag. Under the charges of murdering her son, Suchana Seth was apprehended and was later brought to Goa, where the crime took place. After arresting her on Monday, a Goa court remanded her in police custody for six days. 

Why Seth has killed her son? 

The police have said that it appeared to be a planned murder and revealing the intent behind the murder, the police attributed a dispute between Suchana Seth and her husband that led the former to kill her son. Speaking to ANI, Nidhin Valsan, the Superintendent of Police, North Goa, said that Suchana Seth had expressed dissatisfaction with a recent court order permitting her husband to spend time with their child on Sundays. 

Both Seth and her husband Venkat Raman weren't in good terms for years and the divorce proceedings between the couple began in 2022. Valsan further said their divorce proceedings are in the final stage and during the investigation, Seth confessed that her relationship with her husband remained strained and she was unhappy over a court order, that directed her husband to spend time with their child. 

It is alleged that as her husband's proximity with their child made her angry, she had decided to kill her son, and executed her plan in Goa. At the time of the incident, Suchana Seth's husband Venkat Raman was in Indonesia and after receiving information about his son's death, he rushed to India amidst a close scrutiny on the case from across the nation. After arriving in Karnataka, Raman told the officials to go with post-mortem that had further revealed the details behind the child's death. 

How she killed her son? 

According to the autopsy report, the child was smothered to death. It has been reported that Suchana Seth used a cloth or pillow to strangulate her son to death. Dr Kumar Naik, who conducted the post-mortem, told reporters, "The child was strangled to death or what we call smothering. Either a cloth or a pillow was used and the child had died due to strangulation. It doesn't look like the child was strangulated using hands. It looks like a pillow or some other material was used." 

By citing that they couldn't determine the exact time of death, Dr Naik said that the child was killed more than 36 hours earlier when the incident came to light. "There was no blood loss or struggle marks on the child's body", Naik added. It has further come to revelation that after killing her son, Seth had attempted to die by suicide. A police officer in Goa said, "She could have possibly used a pillow to kill her son and she tried to kill herself by slitting her wrists using a pair of scissors. Blood samples have been collected and a DNA test will be done for verification." 

A native of West Bengal, Suchana Seth resided in Bangalore while her husband Venkat Raman hails from Kerala. They married in 2010 and their son was born in 2019. In the wake of disputes, they filed divorce in 2020. Seth reportedly had a good educational background with expertise on AI. She is said to be an AI ethics expert and data scientist with over 12 years of experience. She earned post-graduate from the Calcutta University and was also a research fellow from Raman Research Institute. Seth had spent two years at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Notably, she was listed as one of the 100 brilliant women in AI Ethics List.