New Delhi, Feb. 19 -- A shocking tax evasion scam has come into light with investigators revealing that multiple eateries across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, among five other states have reportedly suppressed sales turnover worth at least Rs.70,000 crore since the 2019-20 financial year. What started as an investigation into biryani restaurant chains in Hyderabad, revealed more details about eateries suppressing their sales figures.

According to a report by TOI, investigators analysed 60 terabytes of transactional data of a pan-India billing software used by more than one lakh restaurants. They also used Generative AI, to crunch the data spanning 1.77 lakh restaurant IDs.

Detailed physical and digital inquiries in a sample of 40 restaurants i...