Who is Suchana Seth, Bengaluru-based CEO accused of killing son?

Suchana Seth, the CEO of an AI startup in Bengaluru, was arrested on Sunday night for allegedly killing her four-year-old son. Seth was caught while trying to flee to Karnataka from Goa with her son’s body stuffed in a bag.

The crime came to light after hotel staff in Goa noticed that she had checked in with her son but left without him. The hotel alerted the police after the housekeeping staff spotted blood stains in the apartment where she had stayed with her son, according to the Times of India report. The Goa police arrested the accused, Suchana Seth, from Chitradurga in Karnataka on Sunday night.

Suchana Seth is the 39-year-old founder and chief executive officer of the start-up Mindful AI Lab. The start-up offers “AI ethics advisory services, audits AI systems and data practices, and empowers humans to build ethical AI.”

According to her LinkedIn profile, Seth is an AI ethics expert and data scientist with over 12 years of experience in the field.

In 2021, she was named on the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics list by ‘Women In AI Ethics’ (WAIE).

Seth has been a Mozilla Fellow at Data & Society, a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Centre at Harvard University, and a research fellow at the Raman Research Institute.

She graduated from Bhawanipur Education Society College, Kolkata with a Bachelor’s degree in Physics in 2006. She received her Master’s degree from University of Calcutta in 2008, where she specialised in Plasma Physics with Astrophysics. She also holds a post-graduate diploma in Sanskrit.

The Berkman Klein alum page describes Seth as someone who is "passionate about closing the gender gap in data science, and leads data science workshops with organizations like Women Who Code."

Seth posted infrequently on social media. Her Instagram page features a photograph of her son and AI-generated artwork, along with photographs from her travels.