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Officials from India’s revenue tax division has 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 position throughout 2002 anti-Muslim riots.
Teams from the tax division surveyed the BBC’s Delhi and Mumbai places of work on Tuesday, the Press Trust of India information company reported, quoting officers who weren’t recognized.
India banned the two-part documentary India: The Modi Question 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 income tax authorities are currently at the BBC offices in New Delhi and Mumbai and we are fully co-operating,” a BBC spokesperson stated.
“We hope to have this situation resolved as soon as possible.”
Last month, the BBC broadcast the documentary within the UK inspecting the riots within the western state of Gujarat, the place Modi was chief minister on the time.
More than 1000 individuals have been killed.
Modi has denied allegations that authorities beneath his watch allowed and even inspired the bloodshed, and the Supreme Court stated it discovered no proof to prosecute him.
The second portion of the two-part documentary “examines the track record of Narendra Modi’s government following his re-election in 2019”, in response to 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 authorities invoked emergency powers beneath its info expertise legal guidelines to dam this system.
Twitter and YouTube complied with authorities requests and eliminated many hyperlinks to the documentary.
India’s overseas ministry on the time referred to as the documentary a “propaganda piece designed to push a particularly discredited narrative” that lacked objectivity.
Many politicians from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party criticised 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 offered the Indian government a right to reply to the matters raised in the series – it declined to respond,” it stated.
The search of the BBC’s places of work was “undemocratic” and “reeks of desperation and shows that the Modi government is scared of criticism”, tweeted KC Venugopal, normal secretary of the opposition Congress celebration.
In current years, India’s Muslim minority has been on the receiving finish of violence from Hindu nationalists emboldened by a primary 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 beneath the Modi authorities, which the rights group stated has regularly invoked draconian legal guidelines to muzzle criticism.
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