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Officers from India’s revenue tax division have begun conducting searches on the BBC’s places of work within the capital, New Delhi.
It comes weeks after the British broadcaster launched a controversial documentary that examined prime minister Narendra Modi’s function through the 2002 anti-Muslim riots.
Groups from the tax division surveyed the BBC’s Delhi and Mumbai places of work on Tuesday, the Press Belief of India information company reported, quoting officers who weren’t recognized.
India banned the two-part documentary India: The Modi Query final month and authorities scrambled to halt screenings of this system and prohibit clips of it on social media in a transfer that critics and political opponents decried as an assault on press freedom.
Indian tax authorities declined to remark.
“The revenue tax authorities are at present on the BBC places of work in New Delhi and Mumbai and we’re absolutely co-operating,” a BBC spokesperson stated.
“We hope to have this example resolved as quickly as attainable.”
Final month, the BBC broadcast the documentary within the UK inspecting the riots within the western state of Gujarat, the place Mr Modi was chief minister on the time.
Greater than 1000 individuals had been killed.
Mr Modi has denied allegations that authorities underneath his watch allowed and even inspired the bloodshed, and the Supreme Court docket stated it discovered no proof to prosecute him.
The second portion of the two-part documentary “examines the monitor file of Narendra Modi’s authorities following his re-election in 2019”, in accordance with the movie’s description on the BBC web site.
The Indian authorities banned the documentary and authorities scrambled to halt screenings and prohibit clips of it on social media in a transfer that critics and political opponents decried as an assault on press freedom.
The federal government invoked emergency powers underneath its data expertise legal guidelines to dam this system.
Twitter and YouTube complied with authorities requests and eliminated many hyperlinks to the documentary.
India’s international ministry on the time referred to as the documentary a “propaganda piece designed to push a very discredited narrative” that lacked objectivity.
Many politicians from Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Get together criticized this system as an assault on India’s sovereignty.
The BBC stated the documentary was “rigorously researched” and concerned a variety of voices and opinions.
“We supplied the Indian authorities a proper to answer to the issues raised within the sequence – it declined to reply,” it stated.
The search of the BBC’s places of work was “undemocratic” and “reeks of desperation and reveals that the Modi authorities is frightened of criticism”, tweeted KC Venugopal, basic secretary of the opposition Congress celebration.
In recent times, India’s Muslim minority has been on the receiving finish of violence from Hindu nationalists emboldened by a chief minister who has stated little about such assaults since he was first elected in 2014.
Human Rights Watch stated earlier that the banning of the documentary mirrored a broader crackdown on minorities underneath the Modi authorities, which the rights group stated has steadily invoked draconian legal guidelines to muzzle criticism.
-AP
