'Murder by mother planned': Cops point to clues from room

Clues from the Goa apartment where a 39-year-old startup founder allegedly smothered her four-year-old son suggest the killing was pre-planned, police said on Wednesday, basing their theory on empty cough syrup bottles found on the premises and the post-mortem report into the morbid crime that has shocked India.

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Police also said that Suchana Seth - who allegedly stashed her son's body in the trunk of a taxi she hired to escape from Goa to Bengaluru before being arrested in a dramatic operation spanning two states - could only be nabbed because her car was held up by a four-hour-long snag on the highway due to an accident.

Seth, who founded the Bengaluru-based firm The Mindful AI in 2020 after stints at Harvard University and Raman Research Institute, is currently in lock-up in 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).

The boy's father, PR Venkat Raman, who was locked in hostile divorce and an acrimonious custody battle, returned to India from Indonesia on Wednesday and conducted his son's last rites in Bengaluru. He will likely join the investigation by the weekend, said police officials.

Goa police officers said the statements of around 12 witnesses were reconnected, and that a sweep of the room in Sol Banyan Grande hotel in North Goa's Candolim, where Seth checked in on January 6, revealed two empty bottles of Benadryl cough syrup.

"Both bottles were procured from the hotel reception and were empty, likely administered to the child... We suspect that this was a pre-planned murder. Further interrogation of the accused will throw some more light on the matter," a senior police officer in charge of the probe said, requesting anonymity.