India, Feb. 19 -- What started as a simple check on biryani restaurants in Hyderabad has uncovered a huge tax evasion scam hiding inside restaurants across India.

Police found that many restaurants were earning money but pretending they earned much less, so they could avoid paying taxes. This added up to around Rs.70,000 crore of tax evasion over the last few years, The Times of India reported.

The discovery was made by studying a giant computer system used by restaurants to make bills. This billing software is used by more than one lakh restaurants across the country. Using computer tools and artificial intelligence, officials checked billing records from nearly 1.77 lakh restaurants and examined about 60 terabytes of data. They found ...