’Devastated’ by Siddhartha’s Letter, Mallya Draws Attention to Own Case

Agencies

New Delhi, 31 Jul: Fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya, who is facing extradition proceedings in UK, on Wednesday took to Twitter to draw parallels with the case of Cafe Coffee Day founder VG Siddhartha, who in his suicide letter has alleged “harassment” by the Income Tax Department officials.

 

Calling Siddhartha an excellent human and brilliant entrepreneur, Mallya alleged that he is being harassed in the same manner as the Cafe Coffee Day founder.

 

“I am indirectly related to VG Siddhartha. Excellent human and brilliant entrepreneur. I am devastated with the contents of his letter. The Govt Agencies and Banks can drive anyone to despair. See what they are doing to me despite offer of full repayment. Vicious and unrelenting,” he tweeted on Wednesday morning. The body of Siddhartha, founder of India’s largest coffee chain Cafe Coffee Day and son-in-law of former Karnataka chief minister and BJP leader SM Krishna, was found in the Netravati river on Wednesday morning.

 

In his letter, Siddhartha blamed one of his private equity partners for “creating pressure” to buy back stocks. “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,” he wrote.

 

The letter also alleged harassment by the previous DG, Income Tax. “There was a lot of harassment from the previous DG income tax attaching our shares on two separate occasions to block our Mindtree deal and then taking position of our Cafe Coffee Day shares, although the revised returns have been filed by us. This is very unfair and has led to serious liquidity crunch,” the letter read.

 

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear on August 2 a plea by Mallya challenging the confiscation of properties belonging to the companies owned by him and his family members.

 

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi took note of the submission of F S Nariman, appearing for Mallya, that the fresh plea be heard along with the pending one on the legality of the law and the action to confiscate the properties.