Indian AI startup CEO Suchana Seth’s 4-year-old was smothered to death, doctor says
The 4-year-old son of an Indian AI startup CEO, who now has been taken into custody following his murder, was smothered to death, a doctor says.
Kumar Naik, the administrative officer at Hiriyur Taluk Hospital, was quoted by India Today as telling reporters that "either a cloth or a pillow was used" to kill Suchana Seth’s child.
"It doesn't look like the child was strangulated using hands. It looks like a pillow or some other material was used," he reportedly added.
Seth, who leads The Mindful AI Lab, remains in police custody Wednesday after being detained in the southern Karnataka state on Monday.
INDIAN AI STARTUP CEO SUCHANA SETH ARRESTED FOLLOWING 4-YEAR-OLD SON’S MURDER: REPORT
Goa police official Paresh Naik said Seth had checked into a hotel in the Goa state on Saturday, but the boy was missing when she checked out of the property Monday night, according to Reuters.
Naik told the news agency that hotel cleaning staff found blood stains inside Seth’s room and notified police.
"When her luggage was opened, the child's dead body was found," North Goa Superintendent of Police Nidhin Valsa was quoted by Reuters as saying.
The child was buried in Bengaluru on Wednesday, India Today reports.
The website, citing staff at the hotel, reported that Seth indicated she wanted to go to Bengaluru for work and asked them to arrange a taxi – a more expensive option than taking the flight that they had recommended.
When police questioned Seth about the blood stains allegedly found in her room, the 39-year-old said they were caused by her menstrual cycle, India Today added. She also reportedly told authorities that her child was with a friend in the city of Margao, but provided a fake address.
Meanwhile, in Bengaluru, police went to the address listed for her AI startup and instead found a co-working space occupied by about 200 people from other companies, The Times of India reports, citing authorities there.
Seth’s LinkedIn page describes her as 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" and that she was "a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University."
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One of her former professors at Calcutta University, where Seth earned her master's degree in physics, according to the LinkedIn page, told The Times of India that she was "attentive in her studies" and said they were "surprised she could commit such a heinous crime."