The Indian Revenue Service raided two Indian offices of the BBC on Tuesday. This is reported by several international news agencies. The searches were carried out in the offices of the British broadcaster in New Delhi and Mumbai. According to a BBC journalist who spoke to the French news agency AFP, all phones would have been seized.
The raids, which were still underway on Tuesday morning Dutch time, come a few weeks after the broadcast of a critical BBC documentary about Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which has now been banned in India. The tax authorities themselves say that it concerns an investigation into the broadcaster’s business operations.
The Indian authorities cordoned off the office in the capital New Delhi on Tuesday and police officers posted at the entrance of the building to deny employees access to the building, AFP reports. No one was allowed to leave the building either. The tax confirms to the Hindustani Times that officials were at the BBC office in New Delhi, but stressed that it is an “investigation and not a raid”. The service remains vague about the nature of the allegations against the British channel. She would examine documents relating to the operations of the British broadcaster.
Critical documentary
A spokesman for Prime Minister Modi’s party told local media on Tuesday that the BBC was the “most corrupt organization” and stressed that if the BBC has done nothing wrong, it has nothing to fear. The BBC has now openly pledged its full cooperation and hopes for a speedy resolution of the situation.
The raids may be related to the two-part documentary broadcast by the BBC in January, in which Modi, then governor of the state of Gujarat, was accused of turning a blind eye to the interfaith riots in 2002. The wave of violence left at least 1,000 dead, mostly among the Muslim community, a minority in India. Since last month, a ban has been in effect in India The Modi Question.
Invoking a controversial IT law, images and tweets directly related to the documentary were removed from social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook via an ’emergency order’. Indian authorities labeled the documentary as “anti-Indian” and “hostile propaganda to discredit Prime Minister Modi”.
In the past, Indian authorities have used fraud investigations to silence critics. For example, journalist Rana Ayyub, who reported critically on the Gujarat riots, was summoned last year because of a fraud investigation. The accusation that she misused public funds and donations for her own expenses is a well-known trick by the authorities, according to analysts. Earlier, Ayyub had to answer to court several times in defamation and slander cases.
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