In the end, it was not a whistleblower, a hacking attempt, or a dramatic raid that first exposed the cracks in a nationwide multi-crore tax evasion racket. It was biryani. More specifically, the numbers behind one of India’s most loved dish.
When the Income Tax (I-T) Department began analysing a massive pile of digital billing data linked to an alleged Rs 70,000-crore turnover suppression case late last year, one segment that kept flashing red was the high-volume biryani business.
THE BIRYANI CONNECTION
According to officials familiar with the analytics review, a surprisingly large share of suspicious billing patterns emerged from restaurants where biryani is the main revenue driver.
And that made sense. Biryani is one of the highest-selling single-dish items in the organised and semi-organised food sector.
In cities like Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai and Mumbai, it is not just dinner, it is an economy. With such scale, even a small suppression per plate can snowball into massive unaccounted turnover.
As investigators went deeper, a pattern emerged. Raw material purchases, especially rice and meat, told one story. Delivery platform data told another. GST filings suggested something else entirely.
The billing software’s internal logs often reflected far fewer transactions than the rhythms of a typical biryani outlet would suggest. During weekends and festive periods, the mismatch grew wider.
The number of plates that seemed to be leaving the kitchen simply did not match what was being declared officially.
HOW BIRYANI OUTLETS OPERATE
Part of the reason, officials say, is how biryani outlets operate. High cash turnover, fast table rotation, bulk takeaway orders and cloud kitchens running multiple brand names from a single backend setup are all standard practice.
But these same factors also make deviations easier to spot. Biryani has standardised pricing and predictable ingredient ratios, so analysts can estimate how much should have been sold based on how much raw material was purchased.
BEYOND HYDERABAD
Hyderabad, with its enormous biryani culture, was one of the cities where anomalies surfaced most clearly. But the pattern did not stop there. Similar inconsistencies appeared across states once investigators compared delivery data, GST numbers and internal software logs.
Officials made it clear that the probe is not about biryani as a cuisine or community. It is not about targeting biryani sellers either. The focus remains firmly on software-enabled suppression mechanisms across the restaurant industry.
The dish only appears prominently because its scale and consistency make it unusually revealing when digital trails are examined.
In other words, the “biryani angle” is not the scandal. It is the spotlight. The popularity of India’s favourite dish simply made the financial footprints impossible to hide. And in the process, it helped investigators piece together one of the biggest tax-related data puzzles seen in recent years.
