From trailblazer CEO to son's killer, Seth's strange journey

How the murder unfolded

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A CEO who founded her own artificial intelligence (AI) company in a pandemic year.

An outspoken woman who served as a fellow and affiliate at Harvard University, and was described as "brilliant and passionate about the open internet".

A 39-year-old who built herself an enviable professional niche, balancing her academic training in physics with an interest in Sanskrit.

Suchana Seth's life trajectory was impressive, having lived in both New York and Boston, before returning to Bengaluru in 2019.

But in India's Silicon Valley of high flyers and top achievers, it was not particularly uncommon.

Until Monday morning Seth, battling an acrimonious divorce with her husband, was arrested in Karnataka's Chitradurga district with the body of her four-year-old son, stashed in a suitcase in the trunk of the taxi she was in.

Police now say the 39-year-old allegedly smothered her son with a pillow at a resort in Goa and then stuffed his body in a bid to escape from Goa to Bengaluru. Her ongoing divorce case, filed two years ago, and restricted access to her son - a family court in Bengaluru had allowed the father custody between 10 am and 4 pm every Sunday-might have been the triggers, police added.