NEW DELHI– The apparent suicide of India’s coffee baron V.G. Siddhartha, under investigation by tax authorities, has inflamed anger towards the government among business leaders who feel it is going too far in its crackdown on fraud and tax evasion.

Drastic measures taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration include stringent action to enforce tax compliance, probes into bank lending practices and threatening auditors with five-year bans for alleged lapses in their work. In particular the push by tax collectors has been labelled ‘tax terrorism’ by T.V. Mohandas Pai, a former director of Indian IT giant Infosys Ltd, even before the Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd founder disappeared and his body was later found floating in a river in southern India on Wednesday.

In a letter circulating on social media since Tuesday and purportedly written by Siddhartha to the firm’s board and employees, he said he “gave up”, blaming tax authorities for “harassment” and decisions that caused a liquidity crunch as well as an unnamed private equity partner for pressuring him into a share buyback.(Reuters)…[+]