Goa murder: CEO who hired taxi with son’s body was quiet during journey, says driver

A woman CEO who murdered her four-year-old son, stuffed the body into a bag and took off in a taxi all the way from Goa to Bengaluru was quiet throughout the journey until her dramatic arrest.

Suchana Seth, 39, was taken into custody after the Goa Police told the taxi driver to take his cab to the nearest police station in Chitradurga district in Karnataka.

Body found

Even when a police officer searched her bag, found the body and asked her if it was her son, she replied in a calm tone: “Yes.”

All this was related to the media on Thursday by Ray John, the cabbie who was to drive her all the way from a service apartment at Candolim in North Goa to Bengaluru.

John said she did not utter a single word during the entire trip that lasted more than 10 hours.

Suspicious bag

“When I reached the service apartment, she (Seth) asked me to carry her bag from the reception to the taxi. It was heavy,” he said, recalling the Monday horror.

“I asked her whether we could remove some belongings from the bag to make it lighter. But she refused. We had to drag the bag to the boot of the car,” he said.

The driver said the only time she spoke was when she asked him to get a bottle of water at Bicholim town in North Goa.

Police alert

There was a huge traffic jam at the Chorla ghat section on the Karnataka-Goa border. The local police told him that it would take at least four hours to get the traffic cleared.

“I exaggerated the time and told madam (Seth) that it would take six hours to clear the road and suggested that we could turn back and head to the airport. But she insisted on continuing by road,” said the driver.

In the meantime, the service apartment staff noticed bloodstain in her room and called the police. It was discovered that the woman had a son when she checked in but had left without him.

Driver alerted

The driver said he received a call from the Goa Police, alerting him that there was something suspicious about his passenger.

“The police told me to search on the GPS for a nearby police station and take her there. I tried searching on Google Maps and GPS but didn’t find any. I even looked for cops at toll plazas but there were none,” he said.

Alarmed by the call from the police, the driver bought some more time under the pretext of stopping by a roadside restaurant. There he learnt that a police station was just 500 metres away.

Police station

“We were one and a half hours away from Bengaluru. I drove to the Aiyamangala police station (in Chitradurga district), while a Goa Police officer remained on the line with me on the phone,” he said.

John said it took almost 15 minutes before an inspector came out of the station.

“But madam was calm and was sitting in the car,” he said.

Body found

The police searched her bag and found the child’s body, said John. "When the police asked her whether it was her son. She calmly said ‘yes’.”

The accused told the police that she and her husband were estranged and their divorce proceedings were on.

According to Seth's LinkedIn page, she is the Chief Executive Officer of start-up Mindful AI Lab and was among the top '100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics for 2021'.

Distraught father

She had checked into the service apartment in North Goa on January 6 along with her son. After staying there for two days, she informed the apartment staff that she wanted to go to Bengaluru for some work and asked them to arrange for a taxi.

A court in Mapusa town remanded her in police custody for six days. She has been accused of killing the child at the service apartment.

Meanwhile, the child's father, who hails from Kerala but is now based in Indonesia, came to India and cremated his son.

(With agency inputs)