Eating joints and other food business establishments in Punjab suppressed sales turnover worth around Rs 500 crore since 2023 by using the PetPooja software, tax officials in the state have discovered.Many food delivery apps and other establishments using softwares similar to PetPooja are also on the Punjab Taxation Department’s radar, though the government is not willing to reveal their names at this stage. The government was also contemplating filing criminal case against the PetPooja software provider, Punjab Finance and Taxation Minister Harpal Singh Cheema told The Tribune.After analysing records of 239 food establishments, the taxmen have found that the eating joints in the state suppressed their turnover of Rs 300 crore in 2023-24, and worth Rs 200 crore in 2024-25, according to Cheema. He said 882 eating joints in the state were using the PetPooja software. “So far, we have managed to analyse records of 239 joints. There was no tax anomaly at 52 joints. We are comparing the sales turnover as shown in the returns filed by these establishments with the original records of total sales transactions or historic billing logs, which we managed to procure from the backend servers of PetPooja software providers,” he said.The tax department has found sales turnover suppression of above Rs 2 crore each by three businesses; Rs 1 crore by six businesses; above Rs 50 lakh by 18 businesses; above Rs 25 lakh by 26 businesses; and, above Rs 5 lakh by 91 businesses. The Tribune had exclusively reported in its news columns on Monday how these food and beverage joints were using specific features in the PetPooja software for suppressing their sales by deleting majority of cash-based transactions.Cheema said the Tax Intelligence Unit and State Investigation and Prevention Unit (SIPU) had first chanced upon the suppression of cash based sales by the food business owners, in October 2025.“We found that the software was being misused in Gujarat and we started investigating the extent of its use in Punjab. It was only after we launched a full-scale investigation that the income tax authorities were alerted and they also started a parallel investigation into the scam, which is believed to run into thousands of crores of turnover suppression by food businesses across the country,” he said.The government is in the process of obtaining UPI transaction data and other digital payment system to enable a deeper reconciliation of actual receipts with reported turnover.