Goa Police unlikely to seek extension of Suchana Seth’s custody for murder

PANAJI: The Goa police is unlikely to seek further custody of Suchana Seth, 39, who was arrested on January 8 on charges of killing her four-year-old son at a resort in north Goa’s Candolim, police officials familiar with the investigation said on Thursday.

Seth will be produced before a judge at the end of her police custody on Friday and is likely to be remanded in judicial custody. A police officer said she has been consistently stonewalled investigators on the events leading up to the child’s death and insisted that she woke up to find him dead.

“She has offered no further detail of the murder. We have gathered sufficient evidence,” a police officer said on condition of anonymity.

Police said the bitter custody battle between Seth and her estranged husband PR Venkatraman was the most likely motive for the murder.

A family court in Bangalore had granted her husband visitation rights every Sunday between 10am and 4pm but save for the first few Sundays after the order, Seth avoided giving her husband access to the child in violation of the Court order. Instead, she travelled to Goa including on the Christmas and New Year’s weekends before making the fatal ‘last minute’ trip to Goa on January 6 during which she is alleged to have committed the murder.

The grisly crime was confirmed when Suchana Seth was nabbed in Karnataka’s Chitradurga district, just 160 km short of Bengaluru, in a dramatic operation that involved Goa police officers contacting the driver of the Toyota Innova she had hurriedly arranged and telling him to drive to the nearest police station.

Seth, who founded the Bengaluru-based firm The Mindful AI in 2020 after stints at Harvard University and Raman Research Institute, is currently in custody of the Calangute police station after being booked under sections 302 (murder) and 201 (destruction of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code, and section 8 of the Goa Children’s Act (Child Abuse and Trafficking).