Cafe Coffee Day founder suspected to have committed suicide: Police

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Cafe Coffee Day founder suspected to have committed suicide: Police

Police suspect Siddhartha would have jumped into the flowing river from the bridge

Tuesday July 30, 2019 12:27 PM, IANS

Bengaluru: Cafe Coffee Day retail chain outlets founder and son-in-law of former Karnataka Chief Minister S.M. Krishna, V.G. Siddhartha, who went missing on Monday night, is suspected to have committed suicide by jumping into a river near Mangaluru, police said on Tuesday.

"Siddhartha is suspected to have jumped into the Nethravathi river near Mangaluru from the bridge though his body has not been traced so far despite massive search operation," Mangaluru Police Commissioner Sandeep Patil told reporters.

Earlier, Siddhartha's driver Basavaraj Patil filed a complaint in a Mangaluru police station that his boss was missing from the bridge over the river where he got down from his car and wanted to take a walk.

"Siddhartha got down from the car on the bridge across the river and asked him (Patil) to wait at the other end of it as he wanted to walk for a while but did not turn up even an hour later," said Patil in his complaint.

Police suspect Siddhartha would have jumped into the flowing river from the bridge as the driver found him missing in the area since then.

Siddhartha, 60, is the eldest son-in-law of BJP's senior leader and state's former Chief Minister S.M. Krishna.

Siddhartha had sold his entire 20 per cent equity stake in the city-based software major Mindtree Ltd to the Mumbai-based Larsen & Toubro (L&T) for Rs 3,300 crore at Rs 980 per share of Rs 10 face value on March 18.

I've failed: Siddhartha Writes In Suicide Note

Siddhartha has apparently left behind to his employees a letter now doing rounds on the social media. IANS is not confirming the veracity of the letter, but the content is as follows:

"To our Board of Directors and Coffee Day family,

After 37 years, with strong commitment to hard work, having directly created 30,000 jobs in our companies and their subsidiaries, as well as another 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.

I would like to say I gave it my all. I am very sorry to let down all the people that put their trust in me. I 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. 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 possession of our Coffee Day shares, although the revised returns have been filed by us. This was very unfair and has led to a serious liquidity crunch.

I sincerely request each of you to be strong and to continue running these businesses with a new management. I am solely responsible for all mistakes. Every financial transaction is my responsibility. My team, auditors and senior management and totally unaware of all my transactions. The law should hold me and only me accountable, as I have withheld this information from everybody including my family.

My intention was never to cheat or mislead anybody, I have failed as an entrepreneur. This is my sincere submission. I hope someday you will understand, forgive and pardon me.

I have enclosed a list of our assets and tentative value of each asset. As seen below our assets outweigh our liabilities and can help repay everybody.

Regards,
V.G. Siddhartha
27/7

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