The Income Tax (I-T) department on Thursday began searches in over two dozen places related to Coffee Day Enterprises, the country's largest coffee company, including the premises of its promoter V G Siddhartha.
Siddhartha is the son-in-law of former Karnataka chief minister S M Krishna, who had shifted his allegiance to the Bharatiya Janata Party last year.
Coffee Day Enterprises is India's largest coffee retail chain, which has built a vertical integration plan of sourcing coffee bean from its plantations in Chikamagalur to the consumer. I-T officials are also searching its estates, sources said.
Siddhartha is also a serial investor, having stakes in MindTree and other software firms. He is also among the country's largest exporters of coffee bean.