A startup founder and CEO from Bengaluru was arrested in Karnataka on Monday after she was caught travelling in a taxi with her four-year-old son’s body stuffed inside a bag. Suchana Seth, 39, was travelling from Goa to Bengaluru by road.
Seth had checked out of a service apartment in a hotel in North Goa’s Candolim on Monday morning to travel back to Bengaluru by road. The hotel alerted the police after the housekeeping staff spotted blood stains in the apartment where she had stayed with her son, according to a Times of India report. When the police in Goa checked the CCTV footage in the building, they saw that Suchana Seth had left without her son, the report said, quoting senior North Goa police office Nidhin Valsan.
Paresh Naik, an inspector from Goa’s Calangute police station, contacted the taxi driver and spoke to Seth on phone. She allegedly told them that she had left her son with a friend. However, the so-called friend’s address was found to be fake.
The police then contacted the driver again and instructed him to drive to the nearest police station. By then, the driver and the woman had crossed Goa and entered neighbouring Karnataka’s Chitradurga district.
At a police station in Chitradurga, the local police checked her bag based on the alert from Goa Police, to find the young boy’s body stuffed inside it.
She was sent to the custody of Goa Police for six days and taken to Panaji where she was sent for medical examination.
Seth had reportedly checked into the Goa service apartment on Saturday. According to the report, she insisted on returning to Bengaluru by road despite the hotel staff saying that flying to Bengaluru would be cheaper than road travel. The staff then booked her a taxi.
"The accused told us that the blood stains were due to her monthly periods. She also told us that her son was with her friend in Margao town (in South Goa) and provided the address," news agency PTI quoted Naik as saying.
According to Seth's LinkedIn page, she is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of start-up Mindful AI Lab and was among the top "100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics for 2021".
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