Goa Police Wednesday said the murder of Bengaluru-based CEO Suchana Seth's four-year-old son seems pre-planned. The police said they had recovered two empty bottles of cough syrup from the room where Seth allegedly killed her son, indicating that she might have given a heavy dose of the medicine to the deceased. Seth was subjected to psychological tests to assess her mental condition and to help find the motive for the gruesome crime, the police said.
A senior police officer told PTI that post mortem has been conducted and there is a possibility that the victim might have been smothered to death either with a piece of cloth or a pillow but there were no indications of any struggle.
"The post-mortem conducted on the body has indicated the possibility that the child might have been smothered to death and there were no signs of struggle. We are examining the possibility if the woman gave a heavy dose of cough syrup to the child before putting him to death," the official said.
"It looks like a pre-planned murder," the official said adding that the accused also tried to commit suicide by slashing her left wrist.
Accused Suchana Seth, CEO of The Mindful AI Lab, allegedly killed her son at an apartment in North Goa's Candolim and stuffed the body in a bag before taking it to neighbouring Karnataka in a taxi, the police said. Seth was arrested on Monday night from Karnataka's Chitradurga and brought to Goa on Tuesday.
Seth is in police custody for 6 days, but officials have yet to find the motive behind the murder.
"We are examining the possibility if the woman gave a heavy dose of cough syrup to the child before putting him to death," the official said. He also noted that it was found during the questioning with the service apartment staff that the woman allegedly asked them to buy a small bottle of cough syrup claiming she had a cough.
The accused, however, has denied any involvement in the crime and claimed that the child was dead when she woke up from sleep. Commenting on this, the official said: "We don't buy her theory. Further investigation will reveal the motive behind killing the child. As of now, we know that she and her husband were estranged because of which she might have done this."
"We are waiting for the report. The check-up was a part of the regular protocol that is followed after the arrest of an accused," the official said.
The child's father, Venkat Raman, who was in Jakarta (Indonesia), reached Hiriyur in Chitradurga on Tuesday night and took possession of his son's body. Seth is the CEO of 'The Mindful AI Lab', and according to her LinkedIn profile, she is an AI ethics expert and 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.
