New Delhi, Feb. 19 -- A shocking tax evasion scam has come to light, with investigators revealing that multiple eateries across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and five other states have 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 reportedly revealed more details about eateries suppressing their sales figures.

According to a report by the Times of India, 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 investigations in a sample of 4...