Suchana Seth, the CEO and founder of a Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence start-up, had made a suicide attempt after killing her four-year-old son in a North Goa apartment, police said on Tuesday.
The 39-year-old entrepreneur was arrested on Monday while travelling to Bengaluru in a taxi with the body of her son stuffed in a bag. She was brought back to Goa where a local court sent her to six-day police custody.
Initial investigations suggest that Suchana, the CEO of Mindful AI Lab, smothered her son to death in a room in the service apartment in Candolim, where they checked in on January 6.
The motive behind the gruesome crime is still unclear, but the accused reportedly told police that she and her husband were estranged and that their divorce proceedings were currently underway.
The murder came to light when the apartment's house keeping staff found blood stains on the towel in the room where the woman and her son had stayed in the previous night and alerted the Calangute police.
“She had asked the hotel staff to arrange a taxi for Bengaluru. After the checkout, when the hotel staff went to clean the room, they found red-coloured stains which they assumed to be blood. The staff immediately informed the police," Goa (North) Superintendent of Police Nidhin Valsan said.
Police spoke to the driver of the taxi in which Suchana was travelling to Bengaluru and directed him to take the woman to the nearest police station.
"The blood stains that were found on a towel in the service apartment were due to the slashing of her wrist," a police officer was quoted as saying by PTI.
Suchana has been booked under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 302 (murder) and 201 (destruction of evidence), and also under the Goa Children's Act.
"The motive behind the killing is yet to be ascertained. We have got six days police custody of the accused and we will thoroughly interrogate her," said a police official.
Suchana hails from West Bengal and has been living in Bengaluru, while her husband, who is from Kerala. is currently in Jakarta (Indonesia).
She holds a Master's degree in Physics specialising in Plasma Physics with Astrophysics from the University of Calcutta.
According to reports, Suchana was among the top '100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics for 2021'.
