Hyderabad, Aug. 2 -- It's been two months since the Cyberabad Municipal Corporation (CMC) began posting about its food safety raids, and both restaurants and their customers seem to be on edge ever since.

As the public tries to depend less on outside food, restaurants are scrambling to win back trust with rapid improvements. Yet, when confronted over the violations uncovered during inspections, many establishments offered questionable explanations instead of accepting responsibility. From "bad luck" to the monsoon, they blamed everything but their own lapses.

"It was our bad luck that day. We clean everything regularly, but our senior staff was not present that day. We have been running this place for six years and something like this h...