Bengaluru CEO may have pre-planned son's murder, cooked up suicide story

The investigation into the murder of her four-year-old son by a startup CEO in Goa has taken a twist with the police suspecting that the accused, 39-year-old Suchana Seth, had been planning the crime for a long time and cooking up a story of an attempted suicide.

Sources said Seth, CEO of a Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence startup company, had put up a social media post with a picture of her son and the hashtag "what will happen to him"? The sources said the post was written on 10 October 2023, and thus aroused suspicions of pre-planning the murder on the mother's part.

The police have also gathered information that Seth was arrogant and quarrelsome within the apartment premises.

Sources also said the child's father Venkataramana had arrived from Jakarta in Indonesia to Bengaluru to meet his son on Sunday after being granted visitation rights, bringing toys and new clothes for his son. But Seth had taken the child to Goa on Saturday, and though Venkataramana made several phone and video calls to her, they remained unanswered.

Meanwhile, the family of four-year-old Chinmay conducted his last rites at Harishchandra Ghat in Bengaluru, amidst the heart-wrenching scene of a grieving Venkataramana carrying the body of his child in his arms and walking toward the graveyard.

Venkaratarama and his family have not made any statements and have requested the media for a later interaction. Police sources said once the final rites were performed, Goa Police would question Venkataramana.

Seth had claimed that she attempted to render her son unconscious to stop him from talking to his father over video call by pressing the pillow on his face, and the child suffocated to death.

She had also claimed that she later attempted to take her own life by slashing her wrists, but failed. Unable to figure out what to do in the situation, she had stuffed the body into a suitcase and checked out of the hotel.

The investigation has shown that the boy had spoken to his father over a video call on Sunday. Seth had confessed that she did not want her son to speak to his father at all. Preliminary investigations revealed that she committed the crime to deny her ex-husband access to the child after a court granted him visitation rights.

Goa Police in coordination with Karnataka cops arrested Seth for allegedly murdering her four-year-old son in a service apartment in Goa. The incident came to light after housekeeping staff found blood stains in the room she had stayed in with her son.

After checking out, she had come out with a large suitcase to head for Bengaluru. As she was boarding the taxi, staff who had seen her son enquired about the child. She informed them that he had been sent to her relatives, and left the apartment. However, the staff became suspicious after housekeeping staff found blood stains in her room, and called the police.

On getting the information, Goa Police traced the contact number of the taxi driver and asked him to stop as soon as he spotted a police station on the national highway. Accordingly, the driver stopped near Imangala police station. Goa Police had briefed their Karnataka counterparts about the development, and the police found the body of the child inside the suitcase stowed in the trunk of the car.

The body was shifted to a mortuary and Seth was taken into custody, police sources said. They also stated that initially, Seth maintained that her son was with a friend, and even gave the cops an address, which Goa Police found to be fake.