The BBC’s places of work in Mumbai and New Delhi have been raided by revenue tax authorities.
The searches come after the launch of BBC documentary India: The Modi Query, which was crucial of the nation’s president Narendra Modi.
Whereas the doc solely aired within the UK, the Indian authorities referred to as it “anti-India rubbish” and protests had been held exterior the BBC’s headquarters in central London.
“The Earnings Tax Authorities are presently on the BBC places of work in New Delhi and Mumbai and we’re totally cooperating. We hope to have this case resolved as quickly as attainable,” mentioned a BBC Studios spokesman this morning.
India: The Modi Query charts Modi’s political rise and particularly checked out his actions throughout spiritual rioting in Gujarat in 2002, when he was Chief Minister of the State. In response to the BBC, greater than 1,000 principally Muslim individuals died throughout the chaos, which started after a practice carrying Hindi pilgrims was set on fireplace.
Indian free speech activists have tried to have the movie reinstated on social media after it was eliminated when emergency legal guidelines had been handed. Final month, college students who gathered to look at a screening had been detained.
India has turn out to be an more and more hostile nation for media crucial of the federal government. The opposition Congress social gathering referred to as the searches “undemocratic” and warned the “dictatorial angle can’t go on any longer.”
Nonetheless, a spokesman for Modi’s ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Celebration referred to as the BBC “essentially the most corrupt group on the planet.”
