Suchana Seth: Oh Mother!

NO CRIME EVOKES more incomprehension than the act of a mother killing her child. When it happens, humans are both repulsed and mesmerised because the bond is the first and most fundamental relationship most experience in their lives. A similar public reaction has broken out as the details of Suchana Seth’s case emerge. The 39-year-old allegedly murdered her four-year-old son in a service apartment in Goa, stuffed the body in a bag, and was fleeing in a cab with it to Bengaluru, where she lives, before the police apprehended her. What has further fuelled interest is her background. Seth was an artificial intelligence (AI) ethics professional and data scientist. According to her LinkedIn profile, she is the founder of a startup called The Mindful AI Lab and had been on the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics List in 2021. She was a fellow and affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University, had worked for many firms, and mentored data science teams and scaled machine-learning solutions at startups. When reporters reached out to those who had known her in the past in Kolkata, where she pursued her graduation and post-graduation, they described her as bright and well-behaved. “I still can remember the girl… I remember she got a fellowship at the Raman Research Institute for research. This was something special. It is not easy for a college student to achieve this feat,” one of her former professors told the media.

The police say the child was smothered to death using either a pillow or cloth. Seth, however, is believed to have told the police that she found him dead when she woke up. A couple of empty cough syrup bottles have been discovered, and the police are said to be looking at whether this might have been a premeditated crime, with Seth sedating the child before murdering him. Some wounds have also been discovered on her wrists and there has been talk of her trying to slash her wrists.

What led her to commit the murder isn’t clear yet. The police have cited her troubled marriage as a likely cause. Seth had met her husband when the two were fellows at a research institute more than a decade ago. They had been living separately for nearly three years, with Seth demanding a higher alimony in court and accusing her husband of domestic violence, something he denied.

Cases of maternal filicide, the act of killing a child who is more than a year old, tend to be very rare. According to one study, it varies between 0.6 and 2.1 per 100,000 children under the 15 years age group. This phenomenon has been studied in a number of developed countries. And when researchers delve into the lives of such women, they invariably find histories of mental illness, broken relationships, social isolation, or other stresses that may have pushed them to violence.

A 2018 paper in the Asian Journal of Psychiatry, which examined the cases of four women in India undergoing trial for killing their children, mentions a 1969 study that classified filicide into five categories.

The first, categorised as ‘altruistic-filicide’, where a parent kills the child keeping the child’s ‘best interest’ in mind is the most common. The others are, ‘psychotic-filicide’, where a parent kills a child under the effect of a severe psychotic experience; ‘unwanted-child-filicide’, where the child is viewed as a hindrance to parents’ social benefits; ‘accidental-filicide’, where a parent does not have any motive behind filicide and this commonly follows severe neglect and abuse; and ‘spouse-revenge-filicide’, where a parent displaces anger towards the child because of ongoing severe marital discord and jealousy.

In the four cases in India which the researchers write about, all women reported severe marital discord and poor social support. Three had severe depressive episodes before and during the time of the alleged crime.

Seth’s act may seem incomprehensible but there will be triggers and causes that researchers will now attempt to understand.

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