The mother of all crimes: Analysing the psyche of a woman who kills her child

“A mother’s love liberates,” said Maya Angelou famously. Suchana Seth seemed to have interpreted this meaningful iteration on a whole different level when she allegedly smothered her 4-year-old son to death in a hotel room in Goa a few days ago, an incident that has left the country appalled and horrified to bits. In a society where the ideology of the mother permeates the process of nation-building and where mothers are spiritually glorified as the Matr Shakti, and in a culture that is famous for their men being mama’s boys, this incident has shaken the country’s emotional core, which is solidly comforted by a high-principled value system. It has caused a scandal that is unprecedented except perhaps a decade ago when Indrani Mukerjea was accused of murdering her daughter Sheena Bora. This time however, the crime seems even more outrageous with the victim being a four year old toddler, seemingly on vacation with his mother. The mother, Suchana Seth herself is no outcast or misfit in high society, being the CEO of the Mindful AI lab. She is also on the list of “100 Brilliant Women in AI”, a Mozilla Fellow at Data & Society, a Fellow at Harvard University and a Research Fellow at Raman Research Institute. One can now add maternal filicide to this impressive resume. There are many theories behind the motive of this killing floating around, the primary one being that her estranged husband had recently been granted visitation rights to the child. A feeble motive, if not ridiculous in nature to common folks. What would drive a woman to kill a human being that she has carried inside her body for nine months and at great personal physical pain and discomfort, released to the world and nourished while they progress through stages in life? It is a question that seems unfathomable, but these incidents do take place. Filicidal references are present in cultural and literary traditions. There are Biblical references to Abraham conspiring to sacrifice son Isaac to please a God who was only impressed by extreme tests of dedication. In Greek mythology there is the story of Medea who killed the children she had with her husband to punish him for leaving her for another woman. In the physical world, examining a more Darwinian concept, historically, Eskimos living in their harsh environments have been known to birth twins and send one baby away on an ice flat to perish because the mother may not have enough milk for two babies to survive. Under any of these circumstances, to choose death over life, of any individual, as a logical conclusion, whatever be the reason is not pardonable nor can it be rationalised or condoned. Philipp Resnick, psychiatry professor at Case Western Reserve University, proposed filicide types where the motivations might be altruistic (where the parent believes they’re killing the child for their own good - the most commonly found motive), unwanted child, spouse revenge, or in the throes of a psychotic episode. Disturbingly, these crimes happen more often than we think. A National Institute of Health(NIH) study in the US found that over a 32 year period , 15 per cent of homicide cases were of filicidal nature. Male children were more likely to be killed (58.3 per cent) than female ones. Fathers were more likely to kill sons, with the mothers being more likely to kill daughters. Researchers found that the most frequent methods of killing were “personal weapons”, such as choking, strangling, beating or drowning of victims. Just last year in Bengaluru, three cases of maternal filicide were reported in August, where two of the mothers were dentists. One had thrown her four year old daughter with developmental disorders, from her fourth floor apartment, while another had killed her daughter before committing suicide in their home. Jurors mostly view mothers who have killed their children as mentally ill. Not always, there are those rare cases where the motives have turned out to be financial gain or revenge, or where the women concerned are homicidal in nature. However, more commonly, mental illness turns out to be the reason. Postpartum depression is also a very common phenomenon where the mother is often battling depression after giving birth due to hormonal changes, coupled with the intense pressure on a mother to take care of a new human being who is completely dependent on her and the loneliness it can sometimes bring. “The burden of childcare often falls on the mother. The expectations from her are huge and from her own family and society without looking or addressing her own physical or mental health,” as said by Prof Prabha S Chandra of the National Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences (NIMHANS). Mothers who have taken this extreme step of killing their own children are often suffering from depression or other mental illnesses and don’t have social, physical or emotional support. In some cases, they might be suffering from domestic violence (as also alleged by Suchana Seth) by their husbands or families and take this extreme step, thinking in their unstable minds that they are doing it for the child’s own good. The most common cases of maternal filicide have been for this reason, where they believe they are acting in their child’s best interests or saving them from some other fate that they believe is worse. On occasion, a lack of bonding between the mother and child (which could be due to a number of underlying reasons such as stress, pressure, depression, violence, etc.) could lead to a psychotic episode that leads the mother to take such a drastic step. Ultimately, increased knowledge of psychopathology in understanding maternal filicide can help, and the more we understand about the offenders or victims of filicide, the better we will be able to identify at-risk individuals and prevent such unholy situations from taking place. The author is a freelance journalist and features writer based out of Delhi. Her main areas of focus are politics, social issues, climate change and lifestyle-related topics. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. 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