The postmortem of the 4-year-old boy, murdered allegedly by his mother AI startup CEO Suchana Seth, revealed that he was smothered to death, according to reports. The child was reportedly killed at a service apartment in Goa and Seth was detained by the police while fleeing with his body to Karnataka.
"He (the child) was strangled to death or what we call smothering. Either a cloth or a pillow was used. The child died due to strangulation. It doesn't look like the child was strangulated using hands. It looks like a pillow or some other material was used. The Rigor mortis had resolved in the child," Hiriyur Taluk Hospital's administrative officer Dr Kumar Naik told reporters.
"Usually in India, rigor mortis resolves after 36 hours but in this child's case, there was no Rigor mortis. So, it has been more than 36 hours since his death," he said. Naik said there was no blood loss or struggle marks on the body. "We cannot say the exact time but it has been 36 hours since his death," Naik said.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Seth is the CEO of 'The Mindful AI Lab', and an AI ethics expert and data scientist with over 12 years of experience in mentoring data science teams, and scaling machine learning solutions at startups and industry research labs.
However, police investigating the case found that the artificial intelligence startup had no office in Bengaluru. Police visiting her company's listed address found a co-working space instead of a particular office, The Times of India reported.
Seth claims to be the founder and CEO of The Mindful AI Labs and the website mentions nothing more than her profile and the services it offers.
The report quoting sources added that a police team's visit to the firm's stated address on the first floor of Gopala Complex on Residency Road didn't yield anything to suggest the startup is a functional one with projects on its portfolio and the payroll.
Meanwhile, the estranged husband of Seth, who was in Indonesia, flew back to Karnataka on Tuesday on police's instructions. The child's postmortem was conducted after he gave the consent.