PANAJI: Two days after her dramatic arrest while fleeing Goa with her four-year-old son’s body in a suitcase, cops said on Wednesday that Bengaluru-based startup founder Suchana Seth‘s alleged act of smothering her child to death in a Candolim hotel was premeditated murder.
On January 6, the day she and her son arrived in Goa, Suchana sent a WhatsApp message to her estranged husband to meet in Bengaluru and spend time with their child as part of a court-ordered arrangement.”When mom and child didn’t turn up, the husband left for Jakarta. We suspect she had planned this through. Based on the child’s postmortem (on Tuesday), he was killed at least 36 hours earlier,” an officer said.

Two empty bottles of cough syrup were found in the service apartment of the North Goa property where Suchana spent two nights.
Cops: Enough evidence to support charge of premeditated murder
Suchana Seth had asked the staff to get her the medicine. “We are verifying whether she intoxicated her child with cough syrup,” an officer said. Suchana didn’t step out of her room until she checked out early on Monday, police quoted the hotel staff as saying.
“We call it a planned murder because of the way she landed in Goa with her son last Saturday, locked herself in the room, killed and packed her son’s body in a bag and hired a taxi to travel to Bengaluru to hide her son’s body,” the officer said.
Suchana left the property around 1am on Monday and might have reached Bengaluru by road in a little over 10 hours had a traffic snarl at Chorla Ghat from 2am till 6am not held up the taxi. On how she planned to dispose of her son’s body, police quoted Suchana as telling interrogators that “nothing” was planned.
“I wanted to take my son to my residence,” she said.
Suchana was taken to both Goa Medical College and Hospital and Institute of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour, Bambolim, for a medical evaluation and collection of samples. It transpired she hadn’t spoken to her father in several years since her mother died. Police said they had enough evidence in the case to support the charge of premeditated murder against the data scientist, whose LinkedIn profile mentions she is a Harvard fellow with a lengthy list of academic and professional qualifications.
Investigators have recorded the statements of more than 12 people already and issued notice to Suchana’s husband Venkat Raman to appear before Calangute police. He may do so either on Saturday or Sunday. Suchana and Venkat met in Bengaluru and got married after a period of courtship.
Police said both were financially sound. Goa CM Pramod Sawant said police had been instructed to “go deep” into the case.