‘Authenticity of signature on letter not known’

Soon after Siddhartha’s alleged letter to his board of directors of the Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) went viral on social media on Tuesday, the income tax department came out with a statement that the authenticity of the note was not known and that the signature did not tally with that on his annual reports.

In the letter dated July 27, Siddartha blames financial troubles and harassment from I-T officials, he states in the alleged letter that, “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 the position of our Coffee Day shares, although the revised returns have been filed by us. This was very unfair and led to a serious liquidity crunch.”

The I-T department’s statement said that the investigation in the case of Siddhartha and CCD arose from searches on the premises of a prominent political leader of the state. It is based on the unearthing of a credible evidence of financial transactions done by CCD in a concealed manner.