Bengaluru: Former Infosys CFO TV Mohandas Pai Sunday appealed to the Union govt to conduct an open investigation into the death by suicide of Confident Group chairman CJ Roy.Pai lashed out at Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, alleging “tax terrorism” by the income tax department against businesses. “Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, please conduct a full, open, transparent inquiry into this. We lost Siddarth, founder of Coffee Day, to reported tax terrorism. Too many people are terrified by tax officials — an assault on citizens’ rights. No way to govern our country. PM Narendra Modi sir, please protect taxpayers from these kinds of attacks and assaults on citizens’ rights,” he posted on X.
The venture capitalist went on to describe the whole I-T raid process as “brutal” for business people. “FM gave such officials more and more powers, but where is citizens’ protection? Are officials punished for a wrong raid? No. Over the last 3 years, Rs 72L cr was collected through direct taxes — a record with voluntary compliance and technology. How much was collected through such raids? How much is stuck in litigation, overruled by courts? The finance ministry must give full data,” Pai wrote.Pai quoted a comment made by Karnataka deputy chief minister DK Shivakumar, who claimed Saturday that the I-T officials were asking a lot of questions. “When they were asking him a lot of questions, he is said to have asked for 5 minutes of time, went inside, and did this (shot himself),” Shivakumar had said.The deputy CM assured that the state will conduct a high-level investigation to bring out the truth. He explained: “We learnt that a team from Kerala came here, and the investigation will reveal further details. This shouldn’t have happened; he was a good businessman.”
