400 km, 16 hours and one bag with body- How cab driver who ferried Suchana Seth aided her arrest
时间:2024-06-26 20:56:45 阅读(143)
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.
猜你喜欢
- Index comes off 15% from October highs
- Impact of AI on skill development in management students
- Karnataka CM flags off 100 non-AC e-buses of BMTC, plans to induct 1,400 more e-buses by April 2024
- US Stocks- Wall Street plunges, S&P 500 set for worst first-half since 1970
- Urban Enviro Waste Management to launch IPO on June 12
- KEI Industries stock jumps 3% today after falling 6% on Tuesday; should you buy, sell, hold KEI shares-
- bi, Daiichi Sankyo has said that going ahead with the open offer at this stage would be “illegal”, “an abuse of process of law”, and “gross overreach” of the pending proceedings before the Delhi High Court and also in violation of the orders of the Supreme Court. The market regulator should, therefore, hear it out before taking any call on the IHH’s proposal, it said.
The Japanese pharma major is also filing a plea before the Delhi HC seeking appointment of forensic auditors to analyse transactions involving IHH, Fortis Healthcare and RHT, Singapore, as directed by the HC on October 18.
The development is likely to create legal hurdles and delay the proposed open offer as IHH had recently told FE that it could only go ahead if Sebi agreed with its legal interpretation that the SC’s September 22 order has lifted all such restraints.
IHH managing director and CEO Kelvin Loh told FE on November 9 that the company would like to go ahead with the open offer “as soon as possible” as there has already been a delay of four years. Ravi Rajagopal, chairman of Fortis Healthcare, had added that their legal counsel has advised that the company can go ahead with the open offer as the SC order has disposed of various appeals, including the suo motu contempt. “We have represented to the Sebi and the matter is with them,” Rajagopal had said.
However, legal observers told FE that the matter is not that straightforward and simple as the Delhi HC has to take the final call on the matter of open offer as well as whether a forensic audit has to be done in the share sale which was executed in 2018.
Also Read: IHH to float open offer for Fortis if Sebi concurs with our legal view: MD & CEO
Loh and Rajagopal had said the possibility that the matter may take a different turn when it comes up in Delhi HC cannot be ruled out.
IHH had in July 2018 acquired a 31% stake in Fortis Healthcare for Rs 4,000 crore through the bidding route. It had also earmarked Rs 3,000 crore to make an open offer for an additional 26% to the public shareholders as required under the law.
Daiichi has written to Sebi that the SC in its September 22 order had asked the HC to consider ordering a forensic audit into the dilution of FHL shareholding, repeated violation of undertakings and assurance by former FHL promoters — Malvinder and Shivinder Singh — and the transaction between FHL, IHH and the clandestine transfer of Rs 4,666 crore to RHT Singapore.
Daiichi is “severely prejudiced” with IHH’s clandestine attempt to subvert the status quo order directed by the SC on December 14, 2018, and September 22 with respect to the conduct of forensic audit and the pending proceedings before the HC by purportedly consulting regulatory authorities, including Sebi, on the proposed FHL-IHH transaction. It has reiterated that the FHL-IHH transaction was currently sub-judice before the HC where FHL is also a party, its solicitors, P&A Law Offices, have said in the letter.
“We further state that any such attempt by FHL and/or IHH to proceed with the FHH-IHH transaction would be in direct contravention of the HC and SC orders,” the letter sent by the law firm has stated. Daiichi Sankyo is pursuing the enforcement of Rs 3,500-crore arbitration award against the Singh brothers pronounced by a Singapore tribunal for concealing information when they sold Ranbaxy Laboratories to it for $4.6 billion in 2008. The apex court had in 2018 put on hold the sale of Fortis Healthcare to IHH on a contempt plea filed by the Japanese drugmaker against the Singh brothers.
- Kotak Mahindra Bank pitches for standardising fraud reporting to RBI
- UP fog alert- One dead, dozens injured in six-vehicle pile-up on Agra-Lucknow Expressway