Hyderabad Hotel Scam: What’s This Shocking Number?

It is already known that the food industry in Hyderabad is superior to any other metropolitan city in the country. But it appears that there is a hidden scam that is silently unfolding behind this massive operation and let us have a look into the same.

The Income Tax Department in Hyderabad has uncovered a massive ₹70,000 crore turnover suppression in the restaurant sector across India. The investigation was carried out by the Hyderabad Investigation Unit using advanced data analysis and AI tools.

Officials examined 60 terabytes of transactional data collected from a popular billing software platform used by more than 1 lakh restaurants across the country. This software reportedly covers around 10 percent of the total restaurant market in India. The probe was conducted under Section 133A of the Income Tax Act.

The investigation analysed backend records covering 6 financial years, from 2019 to 2020 up to 2025 to 2026. During this period, the billing software recorded total transactions worth ₹2.43 lakh crore. However, within this amount, officials found ₹13,317 crore marked as post billing deletions.

According to investigators, the repeated pattern of deletions and edits suggests structured suppression of actual turnover in several cases. By studying the broader trends, the department estimates that the overall concealed sales across the sector could be at least ₹70,000 crore since 2019 to 2020.

Using AI and Generative AI tools, officials mapped 1.77 lakh restaurant IDs and linked GST numbers through open source and public data. The forensic analysis was conducted at the digital lab in Hyderabad after accessing backend data from the software provider’s centre in Ahmedabad.