Indian authorities raid BBC offices weeks after PM Narendra Modi documentary
Indian tax authorities raided the BBC offices in New Delhi and Mumbai on Tuesday, barely a month after the news organisation released a documentary that questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged involvement in the deaths of almost 1,000 Muslims in 2002.
The BBC said it was cooperating with the tax officials and “hope to have the situation resolved as quickly as possible” in a tweet on Tuesday.
Local reports asserted that the officials seized the devices of the BBC staff during the raid.
Meanwhile, Gaurav Bhatia, media aide to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), described the raid as only a “tax survey.”
“If you have been following the law of the country, if you have nothing to hide, why be afraid of an action that is according to the law?” Mr Bhatia queried while addressing reporters.
The BBC, in his words, had a “tainted and black history of working with malice against India,” adding that “it would not be wrong to say that it is the most corrupt and ridiculous corporation in the world.”
The controversial documentary, ‘India: The Modi Question’, released January 17, revisited allegations of complicity on the government’s part, that Mr Modi, as chief minister of Gujarat in 2002, encouraged police officers to stand aside when Muslim households got attacked in a communal clash with the Hindus.
In 2012, Mr Modi was exonerated by the Indian Supreme Court on charges that he had instructed the police to permit rioters to attack the minority Muslim population without restraint.
The Indian government labelled the documentary a mere “propaganda and anti-India garbage, disguised as documentary”
The government swiftly invoked emergency laws that restricted YouTube and Twitter from sharing links and clips of the documentary on their platforms.
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