Suchana Seth, the CEO of a Bengaluru-based AI business, has been accused of suffocating her 4-year-old kid in an apartment in Goa. She sent a message to her estranged husband Venkatraman PR, telling him that he could visit his child in Bengaluru on Sunday, January 7. However, Suchana most likely did not intend to enab le the meeting because her stay in Goa was scheduled from January 6 to January 10.
According to the reports, Venkat was in Bengaluru at the time and he responded to Suchana’s message by showing up at the location where Suchana had stated she would be with their son. He waited for two hours, called and texted Suchana, but received no response. So he departed for Jakarta to work.
On Wednesday, the Goa Police launched a FIR against Suchana Seth. The FIR was registered by the management of the hotel where Suchana with her son was staying. Suchana has not acknowledged murdering her son, but she did tell the police that he died on January 7, a day after they booked into the hotel in Goa.
Even though her reservation was valid until January 10, Suchana requested a cab on the evening of January 7 saying that she had an urgent work assignment in Bangalore. She left the hotel alone with a suitcase.
The cab driver Royjohn D’Souza said that at around 11 PM on 7 January, he got a call from the reception of Hotel Sol Banyan Grande in Candolim, asking him to ferry Suchana Seth “urgently” to Bengaluru. He said that the red trolley bag that Suchana was carrying was unusually heavy, but he didn’t think much of it.
They left Candolim around 12.30 am, along with a co-driver, and reached Chorla Ghat at the Goa-Karnataka border at around 2 AM. There, a truck had overturned, causing a massive traffic jam.
The cab driver stated that he told Suchana that they could be stuck in the traffic jam for 4 to 6 hours, as the traffic was not moving at all. Therefore he suggested that Suchana take a flight instead, and offered to drop her at the airport using an alternate route since she said she was in a hurry to reach Bengaluru.
But Suchana refused to travel by air, stating that she would only travel by road, regardless of the time it took. He found it odd, because earlier she had said was in a hurry. But as the cab ride was fixed at an amount of Rs30,000, he didn’t protest. After being stuck in the traffic jam for 4 hours, the vehicle was finally able to move in the morning.
On January 8, the driver received a call from the Goa Police and asked if his passenger was alone or a child was with her. The police were talking in Konkani, which the woman didn’t understand. Police told him them that they found bloodstains in her hotel room and they had a suspicion about her. The police then asked him to hand over the phone to Suchana and asked her about her son, and she claimed that she left her son at a friend’s house, and have them an address.
The driver played an important role in the CEO’s arrest. After confirming that Suchana was lying about her son, the officers called the driver again some time later, and ordered him to take the cab to the nearest police station, without telling Suchana. The cab was already in Karnataka at the time.
Royjohn D’Souza said that they were on the expressway, and he could not understand about the location as all signage are in Kannada. Therefore he searched for the nearest police station on Google map, and it showed one 150 km away. As it would have taken too long to reach that police station, he told Suchana that he and his co-driver needs to use a washroom, and stoped the car near a restaurant. There they talked to the watchman, who said that the Aimangala police station in Karnataka’s Chitradurga district was just 500 metres away.
He then called back Goa Police, and kept them on standby on the call, and took the service road on the highway to reach the police station. After reaching the police station, he handed over the phone to the in-charge of the police station. After the cops talked to the Goa police, they searched the bag and found the dead body of Suchana’s son. The driver said that the woman didn’t show any reaction when the police were searching the bag. Suchana was immediately arrested after that.
It is possible that if they were not stuck for 4 hours in the traffic jam, the cab would have reached Bengaluru and the woman would not have been caught. She would have been able to dispose of the body, and then perhaps disappear or make a up story, leading cops to a clueless investigation.
Investigators are still unsure about the reason for the heinous murder, Suchana may have suffocated her kid with a pillow after administering a large dosage of cough medication. Police said that the murder was pre-planned as two empty bottles of cough syrup were found in the Goa apartment where she allegedly killed her son.
Reports said Suchana told her friends and family members that the son reminded her of her estranged husband’s face.
She spent much of the day in the Goa service apartment in her room. On January 7, Suchana purchased coffee and meals online.
According to reports, the bloodstains that alerted the hotel personnel after Suchana left were her own, which supports the police’s conclusion that after killing her kid, Suchana attempted to cut her wrist.
Suchana’s neighbors in Bengaluru describe her as peaceful. Until four months ago, she lived on Rachenahalli Main Road. She had moved out of this flat with her son four months ago. Suchana went to school in Chennai and college in Kolkata. Her professors recall her as a talented student who received a grant from The Raman Research Institute.