400 km, 16 hours and one bag with body- How cab driver who ferried Suchana Seth aided her arrest

400 km, 16 hours and one bag with body: How cab driver who ferried Suchana Seth aided her arrest

On the night of January 7, a driver from Goa’s Anjuna got a call from the reception of Hotel Sol Banyan Grande in Candolim, asking him to ferry a passenger “urgently” to Bengaluru.

He was told to reach the hotel at 12.30 am, and a fare of Rs 30,000 was agreed upon. He followed suit, knowing very little that the trip would be his longest, most daunting ride.

Also Read: All about Suchana Seth, Bengaluru-based CEO arrested for killing 4-year-old son in Goa

The cab driver, Royjohn D’Souza, in an exclusive interview with Indian Express, revealed how he managed to take her to the police station without arousing suspicion.

As the ride started, she sat with an impassive face. Throughout the nearly 16-hour, 400-km long 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.

D’Souza, the driver, was instrumental in her arrest.

Also Read: Suchana Seth ‘smothered’ son to death, tried to kill self | Top points

“My co-driver and I reached the parking area. She said she was travelling alone and told me to put a red trolley bag in the boot. The suitcase was unusually heavy, but I didn’t think much of it,” the driver told Indian Express.

They left Candolim at 12.30 am and reached Chorla Ghat – on the Goa-Karnataka border – nearly 2 hours later. There, a truck was overturned, causing a four-hour traffic jam.

D’Souza offered the CEO to be dropped at the airport since she had to reach Bengaluru for “urgent work”, however, she insisted that she wanted to go by road.

Also Read: Did Suchana Seth administer cough syrup to son before ‘smothering’ him? Police suspect pre-planned murder

During the journey, Seth was completely silent, barring one time when she asked if he wanted to drink water, he told IE. For the next few hours, he continued to drive non-stop, till he got a call from a Calangute police inspector around 11 am.

What followed was a clever conversation with the Goan Police, a swift detour with an excuse of a washroom break, and the final handover to the Police.

The cab driver said, “The police inspector asked me if the passenger I was ferrying was alone or if a child was with her. The officer was talking in Konkani, and I figured that she could not understand our conversation. I told him she was alone. He said police had found bloodstains in her hotel room and they had a suspicion about her. Then, I passed the phone to her and said that someone wanted to speak to her. The officer spoke to her for a couple of minutes. She mentioned an address. Besides that, she didn’t react much and did not seem to be in any sort of panic.”

Also Read: Goa murder: Arrested for ‘killing’ 4-year-old son, Suchana Seth sent to 6-day police custody

The police looked into it and found the address to be fake. A cop dialled the cab driver once again, this time directing him to “immediately drive to the nearest police station”.

“At the time, we were on the expressway, and I could only see villages… all the signboards were in Kannada, so I didn’t know where to go. I Googled the nearest police station and, somehow, the map showed one at a distance of 150 km. That would have been too far. So, I told her that my co-driver and I need to use a washroom, and stopped the car,” he said.

Along the roadside, the duo found a restaurant, where the watchman informed them that Aimangala police station in Karnataka’s Chitradurga district was just 500 metres away. “I verified from the watchman if it was a police outpost or a big police station since the matter was sensitive. I called Goa police and kept them on standby on the call, and drove via a service road on the highway to the police station,” he said, Indian Express reported.

Also Read: Hotel staff, cab driver: How alert citizens helped Goa Police nab woman CEO who ‘killed’ son

D’Souza said Seth asked him why he had stopped the car outside the police station. “I made up an excuse, and handed my phone to the in-charge of the police station at Aimangala. The police officers of both states then coordinated and, in the next 10 minutes, the police checked the luggage and found the body of her son. I didn’t have time to process what was happening and just did what the police asked. She did not show any emotion while the police were conducting the check,” he said.

Expressionless, quiet and seemingly resigned to fate, Seth sat in the cab. A policewoman later took her into custody after the boy’s body was found int he trolley bag.