Bengaluru: Suchana Seth sat with an impassive face during her 16-hour, 400-km cab ride from Goa to Chitradurga on January 8. She spoke just a few times, murmuring one-line sentences, sat quietly on the back seat and did not doze off even for a fleeting second.
These and many more details from the ride were disclosed by the cab driver, Ray John, 33, in an interview with DH.
Seth, the 40-year-old CEO of Bengaluru startup Mindful AI Lab, is accused of fatally smothering her four-year-old son, Chinmay Seth Raman, at a hotel in Goa's Candolim. She then purportedly tried to kill herself by slashing her wrist but gave up. She is understood to have allegedly stuffed the child's body in a medium-sized bluish-black trolley, asked the hotel staff to arrange for her a cab to Bengaluru, and left.
John quoted Rs 30,000 for the 600-km ride to Bengaluru, and Seth agreed without asking questions.
John reached the hotel at 12.30 am on January 8, accompanied by a fellow cab driver named Devraj Shinde.
As John picked up the trolley to transfer it into the cab, he found it unusually heavy. To his queries, Seth told him it was stuffed with nothing but her clothes.
The cab left. A while into the journey, Seth asked for water and bought a bottle from a roadside vendor. After reaching Chorla Ghat, John had to stop because the road was blocked due to an accident.
John learnt from the police that the road would not be cleared for another five hours. He told Seth the roadblock would take seven hours and asked if she would like to go to the airport and take a flight to Bengaluru.
But Seth insisted on making the road trip. This looked odd to John. "She seemed to be in a great hurry when she booked the cab. But at Chorla Ghat, she was quiet and indifferent as if she had all the time in the world," John said.
Their journey resumed at 6 am, and they stopped at a restaurant on the outskirts of Dharwad for breakfast two hours later. Seth ate a quick breakfast of puri bhaaji and was ready to resume the journey.
John and Shinde got back into the cab and drove off. Several hours later, John got a phone call from the Calangute police.
Speaking in Konkani, the policeman asked John where he was and how many people were there in the cab. He was particularly interested in knowing whether the woman passenger was accompanied by her child.
When John replied in the negative, the police officer got suspicious, asked him to pull over and hung up. He called back minutes later, asked about their location and cross-checked whether the child was indeed not with the woman.
John replied in the negative and asked the officer to talk to the woman passenger.
To the police officer's queries, Seth claimed that she had left her son with a female friend at Margao and gave an address, which later turned out to be fake.
John said he didn't get what the fuss was all about.
Suspecting foul play, the police officer called John again and explained to him that his woman passenger had checked into the hotel with her child and that bloodstains were found in her room.
The officer asked him to drive to the nearest police station and get a cop there on the line.
John checked the Maps, which incorrectly showed the nearest police station was 150 km behind. Unsure of what to do, John decided to keep driving but didn't find any police station.
Meanwhile, the Calangute police officer kept calling him. Speaking only in Konkani, he asked John to pull over the moment he saw any police officer.
John struggled to locate the police station because all the signboards were in Kannada. He then came up with an idea. Speaking in Konkani, he told Shinde that they would pull over the moment they saw a restaurant. He asked Shinde to get into the restaurant and stay there for 10 minutes.
John finally saw a restaurant and pulled over. Seth asked why he had stopped. John replied that his colleague had to relieve himself. Both got down while Seth stayed put in the cab.
John asked a passerby about the police station and learnt that the nearest was just 500 metres away.
As the group resumed the journey, John discreetly drove to the Aimangala police station, Chitradurga district. Seth asked why he had stopped. John told her what the police officer had told him.
Expressionless, quiet and seemingly resigned to fate, Seth sat in the cab. A policewoman later took her into custody.
Police have impounded John's car as part of the murder investigations.
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