Suchana Seth CEO of Mindful AI Lab.
Credit: X/@suchanaseth
Suchana Seth, a 39-year-old Chief Executive Officer of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) start-up, stands accused of killing her four-year-old son in Goa and then carrying his body by road to Karnataka, where she was apprehended by the police.
Here's all you need to know about Suchana Seth and why she committed the heinous crime.
Reportedly, Suchana was embroiled in a contentious divorce with her husband and was unhappy with the court order that allowed him visitation rights to their four-year-old. However, a concrete motive for the murder is not yet known, though a probe is under way and the accused has been sent to a six-day police custody.
- As per her LinkedIn profile, Seth is the founder of Mindful AI Lab and has been there since 2020. Prior to that, she spent two years at the Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society at the Harvard University. She's also been a Mozilla Fellow at Data & Society and has been a fellow at the Raman Institute.
- Seth's profile notes "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."
- She was on the list of 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics 2021. Seth also spent time working in Bengaluru at different jobs between 2012 and 2016.
- Seth, as per her LinkedIn profile, graduated with B.Sc Physics from the Bhawanipur Education Society College and did her M.Sc from the University of Calcutta.
Suchana's last post on Instagram has been drawing attention as well. It shows a young child reaching out towards a fish, and has hashtags like 'findinglosing' and 'whatwillhappen'.
Screengrab of last post from Suchana's Instagram.
Credit: Instagram/suchanaseth
How the crime unfolded
Suchana checked into a rented apartment in North Goa's Candolim along with her son, on January 6. After spending a couple of days there, she told the staff of the serviced apartment that she needed to travel to Bengaluru for work and insisted on a taxi despite them telling her that a flight would be cheaper.
On January 8, she left for Bengaluru and the staff came across blood stains on a towel in the room when they went in to clean up after her. They immediately informed the police and shared that her son was not with her when Suchana left, adding that the bag she was carrying was unusually heavy, The Hindustan Times reported.
When the police contacted her, Suchana attributed the bloodstains to her period and said her son was with a friend in South Goa, going so far as to providing an address.
The police verified and found the address to be fake. The cops then contacted the taxi driver who was supposed to take her to Bengaluru, and instructed him to take her to the nearest police station instead.
The cabbie took her to the station in Chitradurga where Goa cops arrived with a transit remand. Her husband, who is reportedly in Jakarta at present, has been informed of the situation, the police told HT.