Cafe Coffee Day founder Siddhartha goes missing
Mangaluru: Cafe Coffee Day founder V G Siddhartha has gone missing on his way to this coastal city in Karnataka from Bengaluru, prompting the authorities to launch a massive search on Tuesday.
According to the police, Siddhartha, the son-in-law of former Karnataka chief minister and BJP leader S M Krishna, was last seen near a bridge across the Netravati river in the Kotepura area in Dakshina Kannada district on Monday night.
Teams of National Disaster Response Force, Coast Guard, Home Guard, fire services and coastal police have been pressed into service to trace Siddhartha.
"I have failed as an entrepreneur," Siddhartha has said in a letter purportedly written to the Board of Directors and employees of Coffee Day Enterprises he founded.
"After 37 years, with strong commitment to hard work, having directly created 30,000 jobs in our companies and their subsidiaries, as well as 20,000 jobs in technology company where I have been a large shareholder since its founding, I have failed to create the right profitable business model despite my best efforts," he said.
"I would like to say I gave it my all. I am very sorry to let down all the people that have put their trust in me," he said. Siddhartha said he fought for a long time but "today I gave up as I could not take any more pressure from one of the private equity partners forcing me to buy back shares, a transaction I had partially completed six months ago by borrowing a large sum of money from a friend".
"Tremendous pressure from other lenders lead to me succumbing to the situation," he said.
Siddhartha, aged around 60, alleged in the letter purportedly written by him that there was a lot of harassment from the previous DG Income Tax in the form of attaching "our shares on two separate occasions to block our Mindtree deal and then taking position of our Coffee Day shares, although revised returns have been filed by us".
The Income Tax Department has acted as per law in its probe against CCD promoter V G Siddhartha, official sources said on Tuesday after a letter purportedly written by him accused tax authorities of harassment.
