Bengaluru: The income tax department on Thursday carried out raids at the house of V.G. Siddhartha, the chairman of Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd, a senior official at the IT department confirmed, requesting not to be named.
Raids are being conducted at multiple locations, including Siddhartha’s offices at Coffee Day Square in Lavelle Road and his residence in Sadashivanagar, both upscale localities in the city.
The reasons and the exact number of locations for the raid are not known.
Coffee Day Enterprises could not be immediately reached for comments over telephone and email.
The raids on Siddhartha come around two months after the IT department carried out a similar exercise against Karnataka energy minister D.K.Shivakumar and his family members in early August, kicking up a political storm, with the Congress accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Union government of misusing investigation agencies to target political opponents.
Siddhartha is the son-in-law of former Karnataka chief minister and former minister of external affairs S.M. Krishna.
Krishna, who used to be with the Congress party, joined the BJP in January.
Shares of Coffee Day Enterprises fell over 7% in intraday trading. At 12.56pm, the stock was trading 3.97% down at Rs232.30 on BSE, while the Sensex was down 92 points, or 0.28%, at 32,308.
Deepti Govind contributed to this story