BBC offices in India searched by tax officials after controversial Modi documentary – National | 24CA News

Officials from India’s Income Tax Department searched the BBC’s workplaces in New Delhi and Mumbai on Tuesday, weeks after it broadcast a controversial documentary about Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the British broadcaster mentioned.

The BBC mentioned it was cooperating absolutely. “We hope to have this situation resolved as soon as possible,” it mentioned in a press release.

Teams from the tax division are taking a look at paperwork associated to the BBC’s business operations and its Indian arm, the Press Trust of India news company reported, citing unidentified sources.

Indian tax authorities declined to remark.

Rights teams and opposition politicians denounced the transfer as an intimidation tactic meant to quash the media.

The search continues “a trend of using government agencies to intimidate and harass press organizations that are critical of government policies or the ruling establishment,” the Editors Guild of India mentioned in a press release.

The investigation is “undemocratic” and “reeks of desperation and shows that the Modi government is scared of criticism,” tweeted Ok.C. Venugopal, basic secretary of the opposition Congress occasion. “We condemn these intimidation tactics in the harshest terms.”

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Gaurav Bhatia, a spokesperson for Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party, mentioned the BBC shouldn’t have something to worry if it follows Indian legal guidelines. But he added that the historical past of the BBC is “tainted” and “full of hatred” for India and referred to as the broadcaster corrupt, with out providing any specifics.

Last month, the BBC broadcast a documentary within the U.Ok. titled “India: The Modi Question” that examined Modi’s position throughout 2002 anti-Muslim riots within the western state of Gujarat, the place he was chief minister on the time. More than 1,000 folks had been killed within the violence.

Modi has denied allegations that authorities below his watch allowed and even inspired the bloodshed, and the Supreme Court mentioned it discovered no proof to prosecute him. Last yr, the court docket dismissed a petition filed by a Muslim sufferer questioning Modi’s exoneration.

The second portion of the two-part documentary examined “the track record of Narendra Modi’s government following his re-election in 2019,” in line with this system’s description on the BBC web site.

The program prompted an instantaneous backlash from the federal government, which invoked emergency powers below its info expertise legal guidelines to dam it. Local authorities scrambled to cease screenings organized at numerous Indian universities, and social media platforms together with Twitter and YouTube complied with authorities requests to take away hyperlinks to the documentary.

Critics and political opponents decried the ban as an assault on press freedom in India.

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The BBC mentioned in a press release on the time that 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,” the assertion mentioned.

India’s Foreign Ministry referred to as the documentary a “propaganda piece designed to push a particularly discredited narrative” that lacked objectivity.

Many lawmakers from Modi’s occasion criticized this system as an assault on India’s sovereignty. Last week, Hindu right-wing nationalists petitioned the Supreme Court for an entire ban on the BBC. The court docket dismissed their plea, calling it “absolutely meritless.”

Human Rights Watch mentioned earlier that the banning of the documentary displays a broader crackdown on minorities below the Modi authorities, which the rights group mentioned has regularly invoked draconian legal guidelines to muzzle criticism. In current years, India’s Muslim minority has been on the receiving finish of violence from Hindu nationalists emboldened by a first-rate minister who has mentioned little about such assaults since he was first elected in 2014.

Press freedom in India has been on a gentle decline lately. The nation fell eight locations, to 150 out of 180 international locations, within the 2022 Press Freedom Index revealed by Reporters Without Borders. Media watchdog teams additionally accuse the Modi authorities of silencing criticism on social media below a sweeping web legislation that places digital platforms together with Twitter and Facebook below direct authorities oversight.

Some media shops crucial of the federal government have been subjected to tax searches.

Authorities searched the workplaces of the left-leaning web site NewsClick and impartial media portal Newslaundry on the identical day in 2021. Tax officers additionally accused the Dainik Bhaskar newspaper of tax evasion in 2021 after it revealed studies of mass funeral pyres and floating corpses that disputed the federal government’s dealing with of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2017, the federal government’s investigation bureau mentioned it was probing instances of mortgage defaults when it raided the workplaces of New Delhi Television, identified for its liberal slant.

Associated Press journalists Sheikh Saaliq and Piyush Nagpal contributed to this report.

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