PANAJI: The chief executive officer of an artificial intelligence start-up, arrested for allegedly killing her four-year-old son in a service apartment in North Goa, tried to end her life, police said on Tuesday, citing initial investigations.
The Goa police arrested the accused, Suchana Seth, from Chitradurga in adjoining Karnataka on Monday night. She was brought to Goa on Tuesday and remanded in police custody for six days by a court in Mapusa town, an official said.
The 39-year-old entrepreneur smothered her son to death in a room in the service apartment in Candolim, where they checked in on January 6, and then tried to end her life by cutting her left wrist with a sharp object, a senior police official said.
The motive behind the gruesome murder was not immediately known, but Seth told the police she and her husband were estranged and that their divorce proceedings were currently underway.
"The blood stains that were found on a towel in the service apartment were due to the slashing of her wrist," he said.
After killing her son, the start-up CEO stuffed the body in a bag and left for Bengaluru in a taxi on Monday, according to the police.
The murder came to light when the apartment's housekeeping staff went to clean the room in which she stayed and found blood stains on the towel, they said.
The service apartment management informed the Calangute police. A police inspector spoke over the phone to the taxi driver, who was on their way to Bengaluru and had reached Chitradurga district in Karnataka, to take the accused to the nearest police station.
A team of the Calangute police rushed to Chitradurga and obtained a transit remand of the accused, who was brought to Goa.
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'.
"The motive behind the killing is yet to be ascertained. We have got six days police custody of the accused and we will thoroughly interrogate her," the official said.
A Calangute police team led by Inspector Paresh Naik is currently in Chitradurga and waiting for a post-mortem on the child's body, he said. Seth has been booked under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 302 (murder) and 201 (destruction of evidence), and also under the Goa Children's Act, said the official.
Superintendent of Police (North Goa) Nidhin Valsan said the woman hails from West Bengal and has been living in Bengaluru, while her husband is from Kerala. He is currently in Jakarta (Indonesia) and has been informed about the incident, Valsan said.
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