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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 Bengaluruin 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 the 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 10am and 4pm every Sunday – might have been triggers, police added.
Seth studied physics at the University of Calcutta before becoming a research fellow at the Raman Research Institute in Bengaluru between 2008 and 2011, senior police officers said.
She spent time as a data analyst in several Bengaluru-based companies and completed a postgraduate diploma in Sanskrit from the Ramkrishna Institute in Culture before becoming a Ford Mozilla Open Web Fellow at the Mozilla Data and Society Research Institute in New York between 2016 and 2017. She then spent two years, first as a fellow, then as an affiliate in Boston, at the prestigious Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and Harvard University.
Also Read | Start-up CEO Suchana Seth attempted suicide after allegedly killing son in Goa?
The fellows page at the Berkman Klein Centre described Seth as an “AI ethics expert and a data scientist”.
“She has built scalable data science solutions for startups and industry research labs, and holds patents in text mining and natural language processing. Suchana believes in the power of data to drive positive change, volunteers with DataKind, mentors data-for-good projects, and advises research on IoT(internet of things) ethics. She is also passionate about closing the gender gap in data science, and leads data science workshops with organisations like Women Who Code. In the past, Suchana has been a Mozilla Open Web Fellow at Data & Society,” the description said.
Seth then returned to India to found the Mindful AI Lab in 2020. Colleagues in the technology sector in Bengaluru said that she came across as “sharp and brilliant.” “When I interacted with her in Bengaluru last year, she seemed completely normal. She came across as well read, sharp and had a brilliant mind, passionate about causes like the open internet,” said Yashwant MG, a tech researcher.
Kiran Jonnalagada, founder of Hasgeek, a Bengaluru-based firm that hosts technology events and collaborates with companies, agreed. “I met her once or twice before the pandemic. They were brief meetings. She came across as a nice person and there was nothing unusual. When I heard the news today I was in shock and am still trying to process it.”
What the Goa police are still trying to piece together are details of the acrimonious fall out with Seth’s husband, Venkat Raman, who hails from Kerala.
The two were married in 2010, and had their only son in 2019, before filing for divorce in 2022. Police officers said the ongoing case in a Bengaluru family court might be at the heart of the crime. The next date of hearing was scheduled for January 10.
According to officers that interrogated her in Goa, Seth felt that her son would not be safe in her husband’s custody. “She has not been in direct contact with her husband for over two years, and has not been on speaking terms with him. Fights with her husband allegedly began with financial issues,” an officer said, requesting anonymity.
In Bengaluru, police officers went to the residence listed as Seth’s official address at Unishire Terrazaa apartments in Thanisandra but were told that she had not lived there for six months. They also visited Springboard, a co-working space in MG Road from where Seth ran her organisation.
With Seth now in custody and investigations set to continue, more details are set to emerge over the next few days, senior police officers said. Details that will shine light on what caused Seth, blazing a trail professionally, to allegedly kill her own son.
From trailblazer CEO to son’s killer, Suchana Seth’s strange journey – Hindustan Times
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