BBC offices in India were searched as part of an investigation by income tax authorities. The searches come weeks after the broadcaster aired a documentary critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The BBC said that it was "fully co-operating" with authorities. "We hope to have this situation resolved as soon as possible," a short statement added. Although the documentary was broadcast on television only in the UK, India's government has attempted to block people sharing India: The Modi Question online, calling it "hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage" with a "colonial mind-set". Last month, police in Delhi detained students as they gathered to watch the film.
The documentary focused on the prime minister's role in anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002, when he was chief minister of the state. The general secretary of the opposition Congress party, KC Venugopal, said the search "reeks of desperation and shows that the Modi government is scared of criticism". "We condemn these intimidation tactics in the harshest terms. This undemocratic and dictatorial attitude cannot go on any longer," he tweeted.
The Editors Guild of India - a non-profit group which promotes press freedom - said it was "deeply concerned" about the searches. They are a "continuation of a trend of using government agencies to intimidate and harass press organizations that are critical of government policies or the ruling establishment", it said.
But Gaurav Bhatia, a spokesman from Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), described the BBC as the "most corrupt organization in the world".
The documentary tracks Modi's first steps into politics, including his rise through the ranks of the BJP to his appointment as chief minister of the western state of Gujarat. It highlights a previously unpublished report, obtained by the BBC from the UK Foreign Office, which raises questions about Modi's actions during the religious riots. The rioting began the day after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims was set on fire, killing dozens. More than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died in the subsequent violence. The Foreign Office report claims that Modi was "directly responsible" for the "climate of impunity" that enabled the violence. In 2005, the U.S. denied Modi a visa under a law that bars the entry of foreign officials seen to be responsible for "severe violations of religious freedom". Modi has long rejected accusations against him, and has not apologised for the riots.
The targeting of organizations seen as critical of Modi's Hindu nationalistic government is not uncommon in India. In 2020, Amnesty International was forced to halt its India operations, with the group accusing the government of pursuing a "witch-hunt" against human rights organizations. Oxfam was also searched last year along with other local non-government organizations.
In 2020, India's press freedom rank dropped to 142 out of 180 countries in the Press Freedom Index, an annual ranking of countries published by Reporters Without Borders (RWB), an international non-governmental organization dedicated to safeguard the right to freedom of information. In 2020, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting blocked the MediaOne TV temporarily for covering a news about the "mob attacks on Muslims" in the country's capital New Delhi. The Jammu and Kashmir police, a law enforcement and counterinsurgency agency, often interrogate (and sometimes arrest) journalists over national security reportage and critical news stories involving the Modi government.
Modi's government has also banned the Times of India, The Hindu and Telegraph India from running government ads on government platforms. Prominent journalists Sagarika Ghose and Ravish Kumar have publicly said that they have been subjected to harassment, intimidation including death and rape threats when they were skeptical of Modi's Bharativa Janata Party (BJP) government.
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