All about Suchana Seth, Bengaluru-based CEO arrested for killing 4-year-old son in Goa

All about Suchana Seth, Bengaluru-based CEO arrested for killing 4-year-old son in Goa

Suchana Seth, a 39-year-old chief executive officer of an artificial intelligence start-up company in Karnataka’s Bengaluru, was arrested on Monday night for allegedly killing her four-year-old son in Goa.

She was caught trying to flee in a cab with the child’s body stuffed in a bag in Karnataka’s Chitradurga district. The motive behind the murder is yet to be determined, but initial investigations suggest that Seth cited an “estranged relationship” with her husband as a factor, as per the police.

Also Read: Start-up CEO kills her 4-year-old son at Goa apartment, arrested while fleeing with body in bag

Who is Suchana Seth?

According to Suchana Seth’s LinkedIn profile, she is the CEO of the start-up Mindful AI Lab and was among the top ‘100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics for 2021’.

Her profile description says “Suchana 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 startups and industry research labs”.

Suchana Seth has been a Mozilla Fellow at Data & Society, a fellow at the Berkman Klein Centre at Harvard University, and a research fellow at the Raman Research Institute, it says.

According to the Berkman Klein Centre alum page, Suchana holds patents in text mining and natural language processing. At Berkman, Suchana was studying ways to operationalise ethical machine learning and AI in the industry.

Also Read: Gujarat: 9 of 11 convicts in Bilkis Bano case ‘missing’, families remain silent

Superintendent of police (North) Nidhin Valsan said the woman hails from West Bengal and has been living in Bengaluru, while her husband is from Kerala. Her estranged husband is currently in Indonesia and has been informed about the incident, Valsan said.

What is the case?

Suchana Seth was arrested in Karnataka’s Chitradurga on Monday with her son’s body in a bag. She allegedly killed her young son in an apartment in north Goa’s Candolim.

The motive for the heinous crime is not known yet but police suspect the CEO’s estranged relationship with her husband as a possible reason behind the killing. Police said Seth, who is a native of West Bengal, was unhappy about her ongoing divorce with her husband Venkat Raman.

Seth checked into the Sol Banyan Grande in North Goa’s Candolim with her son on Saturday, while her husband, who works as an AI developer, was in Indonesia. On Monday, she checked out of the room alone and asked the hotel staff to book her a taxi to Bengaluru. She insisted on taking a taxi despite being advised to take a flight, the staff said.

The staff noticed that her son was missing. After she left, the housekeeping staff also noticed bloodstains in the apartment she had occupied.

Also Read: Cash-for-query row: TMC MP Mahua Moitra issued show-cause notice after she fails to vacate govt bungalow

They informed the Goa police, who called the taxi driver and asked to speak to Suchana Seth. When she was asked about her son, she claimed he was with a friend and gave an address, which turned out to be fake.

The police then called the driver again. Speaking in Konkani to make sure Seth could not understand, the Goa police asked the driver to divert the cab to the nearest police station in Chitradurga, around 200 km from Bengaluru.

When the cab driver did as told, the Chitradurga police arrested Seth and the body of her son was found inside the bag she was traveling with. Police have asked Seth’s husband to return to India.

Seth was taken back to Goa for questioning.

(With inputs from agencies)