The case of the shocking murder of a four-year-old by his mother, a CEO of a Bengaluru start-up, continues to unravel. After allegedly suffocating her son to death at a hotel in Goa’s Candolim, Suchana Seth attempted to hide the murder. She was fleeing with the body stuffed in a suitcase in the dead of the night but was caught in Karnataka’s Chitradurga district. The taxi driver who was ferrying her played a big role.
We take a look at what happened after Seth left the Goa hotel in the wee hours of 8 January and how the cabbie managed to take her to a police station without raising any suspicion.
Fleeing from Goa
The cab driver, Royjohn D’Souza, told The Indian Express in an exclusive interview that he received a call from the Goa hotel, where Seth was staying with her son, around 11 pm on 7 January, asking to urgently drive her to Bengaluru. The 39-year-old CEO agreed to pay Rs 30,000 for the ride.
D’Souza reached the hotel with a co-driver at 12.30 am on 8 January and Seth informed him that she was travelling alone. She asked him to load her bag in the car’s boot. “The suitcase was unusually heavy, but I didn’t think much of it,” he told The Indian Express.
Also read: Who is Suchana Seth, the Bengaluru CEO who allegedly killed 4-year-old son?
The traffic jam
Soon after, the cab left from Candolim and reached Chorla Ghat on the Goa-Karnataka border at 2 am. An accident – a truck had overturned – caused a massive traffic jam and they were stuck for about four hours.
D’Souza said that since the traffic was standstill, he offered to drop the woman at the airport because she was in a hurry to leave Goa. But she refused and insisted on going by road. “I found that odd, considering she was in a hurry, but then I was getting paid…,” the driver told The Indian Express.
“When she was fleeing Goa, she was stuck at Chorla Ghat due to an accident for four hours. This was a blessing in disguise. Had she reached Bengaluru it would have been difficult to get the body of the child,” police sources were quoted as saying by NDTV.
Also read: Did Bengaluru CEO Suchana Seth ‘kill’ her son to stop him from meeting his father?
A call from the police
As D’souza continued to drive, he got a call from the police in Goa, asking if Seth was alone or with her son. The police inspector informed him about blood stains found by the hotel staff in the woman’s room and that they suspected her.
The driver then passed the phone to the accused, where she mentioned an address. But she did not react much or seem to panic, he told the publication.
The police inspector had asked Seth about the whereabouts of her son. She told him that she had left him at a friend’s place in Fartoda and gave him an address. But when the cop contacted his counterpart in the Goan suburb, he found that the address was fake.
The inspector once again contacted the driver, speaking to him in Konkani and asked him to take the vehicle to a nearby police station. By then, they had reached Chitradurga district in Karnataka.
Finding a police station
The driver told The Indian Express that they were on the expressway and the signboards were in Kannada, so he did not know where he could find the police station. So he “discreetly googled the nearest police station” and the map showed one which was 150 kilometres away. “That would have been too far. So, I told her that my co-driver and I need to use a washroom, and stopped the car,” he said, according to the report.
Using the excuse, D’souza alighted the cab and asked the watchman of a roadside restaurant about the nearest police station. He told the driver that the Aimangala police station in the Chitradurga district was 500 metres away. The cabbie immediately called the Goa Police, kept them on standby and drove towards the police station.
The arrest
On seeing the police station, Seth asked D’souza why they were there. He once again made an excuse and handed his phone to the in-charge. The police officer at Aimangala spoke to his counterpart in Goa, who updated him on the situation.
Within 10 minutes, the police checked the accused woman’s suitcase and found the body of the boy.
The police team from Goa left for Karnataka and took custody of Seth. They arrested her, took transit remand and brought her to Goa. She was produced in a court in Mapusa, which remanded her in police custody for six days.
The investigation
During the interrogation, Seth denied her involvement in the crime and claimed that the child was already dead when she woke up.
The Goa police have found empty bottles of cough syrup in the hotel room where Seth allegedly killed her son. Investigators suspect that she might have given the child a heavy dose of medication and then smothered him with a cloth or pillow. Seth and her husband are undergoing divorce proceedings. The accused was reportedly unhappy with a court order that allowed the father to meet the son every Sunday.
Police also suspect that the murder was pre-planned.
With inputs from agencies
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How cabbie, ferrying Bengaluru CEO who killed son, played big role in her arrest
