CCD founder VG Siddhartha's postmortem report out, no foul play suspected

VG Siddhartha, son-in-law of former Karnataka Chief Minister SM Krishna, was found dead on Wednesday, two days after he went missing mysteriously near Mangaluru in Karnataka.

New Delhi: The Wenlock District Hospital that conducted postmortem examination of Cafe Coffee Day founder-owner VG Siddhartha`s body on Friday confirmed death due to drowning.

Water in lungs confirms death due to drowning, the postmortem report said, while ruling out any foul-play.

Siddhartha, son-in-law of former Karnataka Chief Minister SM Krishna, was found dead on Wednesday, two days after he went missing mysteriously near Mangaluru in Karnataka. After he went missing on Monday night, a massive search operation was launched along Netravati River and Siddhartha’s body was found after more than 24 hours.

Hours after he went missing, a letter written by him to Board of Directors and CCD employees appeared in the media. He had mentioned in the letter that he had “failed” and was “succumbing to the situation”. In the letter, the CCD founder talked about his “failure to create the right business model” despite his “best efforts”. He also accused a DG of Income Tax department of harassment, saying, “There was a lot of harassment from the previous DG income tax in the form of attaching our shares”.

He owned a direct stake of 32.75% in CCD, together with his family controls 53.93 per cent of the coffee chain. Cafe Coffee Day, a part of Coffee Day Global Limited, opened its first cafe in 1996 at Brigade Road in Bangalore and was listed in S&P BSE 500 in 2015. The company also has its presence in Austria, Czech Republic and Malaysia.

Siddhartha had been selling assets in the recent past in order to cut debt. In May, he exited from his 20.32 percent holding in Mindtree by selling the entire stake to construction major Larsen and Toubro through a block deal worth around Rs 3,200 crore.

As on March 2019, Coffee Day Enterprises, the holding firm of CCD, had a total debt of around Rs 6,550 crore while its logistics arm, Sical has Rs 1,113 crore debt.