The 58-year-old VG Siddhartha was reported missing mysteriously since Monday night when he was en route to Mangaluru.
Roughly two days after India's biggest coffee chain Cafe Coffee Day's (CCD) owner VG Siddhartha went missing, his body was found on the banks of Netravati River near Hoige Bazaar in Mangaluru on Wednesday. Coffee Day Managing Director and Chairman Siddhartha was missing since Monday night.
"Today early morning we found the body floating over water... we receive the body and brought out ... it is being shifted to Wenlock District Hospital for further proceedings," said Sandeep Patil, Mangaluru Police Commissioner.
The floating body was spotted by a local fisherman early Wednesday morning. Suspecting that this could be Sidhartha's body, he sent an alarm to the authorities. Soon after that a search team reached the spot and recovered the body.
A former cabinet minister UT Khader in a statement after Siddhartha body was found said, "yes it is confirmed it's his body... from the right finger, clothes, etc.. it's very sad news."
Meanwhile, Siddhartha's family has been informed about this development. It is expected that CCD's owner family will leave for Mangaluru soon. Also, Siddhartha's rites are likely to take place at his native place Chikkamagaluru.
The 58-year-old VG Siddhartha was reported missing mysteriously since Monday night when he was en route to Mangaluru. He was last seen on the Ullal bridge over the Netravati river.
Coffee Day's owner body has been found after a massive search operation carried out by the Karnataka police with more than 200 officials and divers on about 25 boats who were trying to trace Siddhartha since Tuesday. Sniffer dogs were also pressed into service by the agencies.
Siddhartha had left from Bengaluru to Sakleshpur in Hassan district on Monday afternoon, but he asked his driver to turn towards Mangaluru on the way, according to police.
He had told his driver he was going for a walk near the bridge, police said.
A letter written by VG Siddhartha, who was also the son-in-law of former Karnataka chief minister SM Krishna, had surfaced on Tuesday after he was untraceable since Monday night. In his letter, the 'coffee king' of India said that he has 'failed as an entrepreneur'.
Further, in his letter, Siddhartha mentioned, "I gave up as I couldn't take any more pressure from one of the private equity partners forcing me to buyback shares, a transaction I had partially completed six months ago by borrowing a large sum of money from a friend." Take a look at Siddhartha's letter:
Siddhartha had also alleged harassment by tax sleuths in his letter saying, "There was a lot of harassment from the previous DG Income Tax in the form of attache our shares on two separate occasions to block our Mindtree deal and then taking position of our Coffee Day shares, although the revised returns have been filed by us. This was very unfair and has lead to a serious liquidity crunch."
However, the income tax department denied charges of harassment during its probe against Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) promoter VG Siddhartha as it pointed out that his signature available with it was different from that on a letter being widely published on social media.
It said the businessman had admitted holding stash income after raids were conducted against him and his concerns.
(More details awaited...)
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