Who is Suchana Seth, the Bengaluru CEO who allegedly killed 4-year-old son?

In a bone-chilling incident, a Bengaluru-based start-up founder allegedly murdered her four-year-old son in Goa and travelled to Karnataka with his body before being caught. 39-year-old Suchana Seth, Chief Executive Officer of artificial intelligence start-up The Mindful AI Lab, was arrested on Monday night in Karnataka’s Chitradurga district while trying to flee in a cab with her son’s body stuffed in a bag, according to The Times of India. Here’s all we know about the shocking incident. The murder Suchana Seth allegedly killed her young son in a luxury apartment in North Goa. She checked into the Hotel Sol Banyan Grande in Candolim with her son on Saturday and checked out on Monday morning. She asked the receptionist to book her a cab to Bengaluru despite being advised to take a flight instead since a cab would be expensive, the police said. The incident was reported to the police after one of the employees of housekeeping, after she left the property, went to clean the apartment and noticed some bloodstains, according to NDTV. The hotel management then informed the Goa police at around 11 am, and a team from Calangute police stations rushed to the spot. North Goa SP Nidhi Valsan, according to TOI, said that they checked the CCTV footage and found Seth to be allegedly leaving without her son. This raised suspicions, and the police interrogated the hotel staff. The arrest The Goa Police later contacted the cab driver and spoke to Seth over the phone, asking about her son. She claimed her son was at a friend’s house in Goa’s Fatorda and even provided the address, which turned out to be fake. The police called the driver again. The police spoke in Konkani to make sure Seth could not understand and asked the driver to divert the cab to the nearest police station in Chitradurga. According to TOI, by that time, the cab had already reached Chitradurga. Following Calangute police station’s inspector Paresh Naik’s instructions, the taxi driver drove to the Aimangala police station without raising any suspicion on Seth’s part. Upon reaching the station, a police officer found the body of her son inside the bag she was travelling with. The accused’s husband, Venkat Raman, who works as an AI developer, is also reaching Chitradurga and the four-year-old’s body will be sent for post-mortem examination, as per a report by NDTV. Seth is being brought back to Goa for interrogation. “We have registered a murder case against Suchana Seth, who is the founder and CEO of a company,” Naik told TOI. According to an Indian Express report, the exact motive is yet to be established, however, during preliminary interrogation, the accused revealed an “estranged relationship” with her husband as one of the reasons. About the woman Suchana Seth, the founder of The Mindful AI Lab, which focuses on advancements in artificial intelligence, has been heading the organisation for over four years, reported NDTV. The LinkedIn page of the organisation says the 39-year-old was among the top “100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics for 2021.” As per her page on the same platform, she has been a fellow (2017-18) and an affiliate (2018-19) at the Berkman Klein Center for two years. She contributed to the ethics and governance of AI and responsible machine learning in Boston, Massachusetts, according to Indian Express. According to the Berkman Klein Centre alum page, Seth holds patents in text mining and natural language processing. “She is also passionate about closing the gender gap in data science and leads data science workshops with organizations like Women Who Code,” the report cited the website as saying. Before establishing the company, she worked as a senior data scientist at Boomerang Commerce in Bangalore, designing data-driven products for price optimisation and intelligence. Seth also worked at Innovation Labs as a senior analytics consultant at the company’s Data Sciences Group. She graduated from Bhawanipur Education Society College in Kolkata with a Bachelor’s Degree in Physics and holds a Master’s degree in Physics, specialising in Plasma Physics with Astrophysics, from the University of Calcutta in 2008, the NDTV report says. She also holds a postgraduate diploma in Sanskrit from the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture. The only post on Instagram featuring her son was about three months ago. The caption started off with hashtags – #whatwillhappen #wish #findinglosing #lifeisbeautiful #lightinwater #fish #holiday #magicofchildhood.

With inputs from agencies