NEW DELHI (AP) – Officials from India’s Income Tax Service raided the BBC’s offices in New Delhi and Mumbai on Tuesday, weeks after airing a controversial documentary about Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the British government said. the broadcaster said.
The BBC said it was cooperating fully. “We hope that this situation will be resolved as soon as possible,” he said in a statement.
A tax authority team is reviewing documents related to the BBC and its operations in India, the Press Trust of India news agency reported, citing unidentified sources.
The Indian Editors Guild said in a statement that the investigation continued “a trend of using government agencies to intimidate and harass media outlets critical of government policies and establishments.” The inquiry is “undemocratic” and “smells of despair and shows that the Modi government is afraid of criticism,” tweeted K.C. Venugopal, secretary general of the opposition Congress Party. “We condemn these intimidation tactics in the strongest terms.”
Gaurab Bhatia, spokesman for Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, said there was nothing to fear if the BBC abided by Indian law. But he added that the BBC’s history was “stained” and “full of hatred” for India, and without elaborating, he said the BBC was corrupt.
Last month her BBC in the UK said, “India:
The Modi Question examines Modi’s role during the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in western Gujarat, when he was then Prime Minister. Over 1,000 people died in the riots. Modi has denied allegations that authorities under his supervision authorized or even encouraged the bloodshed, and said the Supreme Court had found no evidence to indict him. dismissed an application that questioned Modi’s exoneration.
The second part of the two-part documentary explored “the track record of Narendra Modi’s re-elected government in 2019,” according to the program’s description on the BBC’s website.
Critics and political opponents have criticized the ban as an attack on press freedom in India.
In a statement at the time, the BBC said the documentary had been “vigorously researched” and contained a wide range of views and opinions. “We gave the Indian government the right to address the issues raised in the series, but they refused to do so,” the statement said.
India’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the documentary a “propaganda piece aimed specifically at promoting a discredited narrative” lacking objectivity.
Many Modi lawmakers have criticized the program as an attack on India’s sovereignty. Last week, right-wing Hindu nationalists petitioned the Supreme Court to ban the BBC entirely. The court dismissed her complaint as “absolutely baseless.”
Human Rights Watch has previously said the documentary’s ban reflected a broader crackdown on minorities under Modi’s government, which has often invoked draconian laws to silence criticism. group says. In recent years, India’s Muslim minority has fallen victim to violence at the hands of Hindu nationalists, encouraged by a prime minister who has spoken little of such attacks since the first election in 2014. .
Press freedom in India has steadily declined in recent years. In Reporters Without Borders’ 2022 Press Freedom Index, the country fell from 8th out of 180 to her 150th. Media watchdogs have also accused the Modi government of silencing criticism of social media under broad internet laws that put digital platforms such as Twitter and Facebook under direct state surveillance.
Some media outlets critical of the government were subject to tax scrutiny.
