Police have recovered two empty bottles of cough syrup in the Goa apartment room where Bengaluru start-up CEO Suchana Seth—accused in the murder of her four-year-old son—had stayed, prompting the investigators to doubt that the crime was pre-planned.
Suchana (39), the CEO and founder of Mindful AI Lab, was arrested on Monday while travelling to Bengaluru in a taxi with the body of her son stuffed in a bag. A Goa court has sent her to sex-day police custody.
Police doubt that the child might have been given a heavy dose of the medicine before being smothered to death.
"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," a police official told news agency PTI.
He said the service apartment staff had revealed that the woman had asked them to buy a bottle of a cough syrup for herself.
"It looks like a pre-planned murder," he said.
The investigators are yet to find the motive behind the crime even as the woman was subjected to psychological test to assess her mental state.
A police officer told PTI that the accused has denied her involvement in the crime during the interrogation and claimed the child was already dead when she got up from sleep.
"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," he said.
An NDTV report, quoting police sources, said Suchana showed no remorse, either over the death of her child, or her role in it.
The woman’s husband, who was in Indonesia, has reached Hiriyur in Chitradurga on Tuesday night and took possession of his son's body.
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.
The cops spoke to the taxi driver and directed him to take the woman to the nearest police station.
Police said Suchana had attempted suicide after killing her son and the blood stains that were found on a towel in the service apartment were due to the slashing of her wrist.
She has been booked under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 302 (murder) and 201 (destruction of evidence), and also under the Goa Children's Act.