Parse error in sudoers file

I've created a user called kafka to whom I am trying to give a sudo access to run only /etc/init.d/kafka commands.

I added the following entry to /etc/sudoers.d/kafka via Ansible:

kafka ALL = NOPASSWD: /etc/init.d/kafka

However, this breaks sudo completely with the following error:

/etc/sudoers.d/kafka: syntax error near line 1
sudo: parse error in /etc/sudoers.d/kafka near line 1
sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting
sudo: unable to initialize policy plugin

Here's the full Ansible snippet:

- name: Create kafka user's group
  group:
    name: "{{ kafka_group }}"
    state: present

- name: Create kafka user
  user:
    name: "{{ kafka_user }}"
    state: present
    group: "{{ kafka_group }}"
    shell: /bin/bash

- name: Set up password-less sudo for kafka user
  copy:
    content: "{{ kafka_user }} ALL = NOPASSWD: /etc/init.d/{{ kafka_service_name }}"
    dest: "/etc/sudoers.d/{{ kafka_user }}"
    owner: root
    group: root
    mode: 0440

What am I doing wrong?