VG Siddhartha death: Police say he was riddled with a large debt

"Coffee Day itself was in debt of around Rs 7,000 crore. In addition, there was the Rs 3,500 crore debt of private holding companies,” police said.

TNM Staff

The Mangaluru Police investigating the death of VG Siddhartha — Coffee Day founder and son-in-law of former Chief Minister SM Krishna, now suspects that he may have taken the drastic step as he was riddled with debt amounting to over Rs 10,000 crore. Speaking to TNM, police officials who are looking into his financials say that the several holding companies of Coffee Day, in which he was a shareholder, had incurred a debt of Rs 3,500 crore in total.   Sivan Securities, Devadarshini Info Technologies, Coffee Day Consolidations and Gonibedu Coffee Estates were Siddhartha's personal holding companies and he had pledged his shares in these companies for the loan, police sources say. "Coffee Day itself was in debt of around Rs 7,000 crore. In addition, there was the Rs 3,500 crore debt of these private holding companies and he had to pay back over Rs 10,000 crore in loans. We suspect that this huge amount of debt had put him under a lot of stress. He had leveraged shares in so many companies he owned that it had become difficult to repay them," the police said.  Police say that investigations led them to believe that Siddhartha wanted to clear the loan he had taken from the private equity firms Standard Chartered and KKR, which had 5.6% and 6% stake in Coffee Day Enterprises. "Devadarshini Info had also taken a loan from these two PE firms. He wanted to pay back the loans to Standard Chartered and KKR as he had pledged that the lenders could take over his shares in Coffee Day if he failed to repay the loans," the police added.  VG Siddhartha went missing on Monday night near the Netravathi river bridge. He was travelling from Bengaluru to Mangaluru when he allegedly told his driver to stop the car on the bridge. Siddhartha is believed to have told his driver to stay inside the car and that he was going to take a walk. Over an hour after he left, his phone was switched off, which began worrying his driver. The driver, Basavaraj Patil then informed Siddhartha's family and the police.  A fisherman named Symond D'Souza had also informed the police that he had seen a man fall off the bridge on Monday night, which led them to suspect that it could have been Siddhartha. His body was found in the river by fishermen on Wednesday morning after a 36-hour search operation. His last rites were performed in Chikkamagaluru later on Wednesday. 

Body 2: 

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