New Delhi: Weeks after the BBC released two parts of a documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the 2002 Gujarat riots, the Income Tax Department has reportedly raided the Delhi office of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
According to a report in India Today, the I-T sleuths have seized the phones of employees of the BBC.
The Income Tax Department’s Delhi team is also monitoring the BBC premises in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) area, reports said.
The Congress has slammed the Centre for IT raids on BBC premises.
“First came the BBC documentary, it was banned. Now IT has raided BBC. Undeclared emergency,” Congress said in a tweet in Hindi.
Congress MP Jairam Ramesh lashed out at the BJP government and said, “Here, we are demanding a JPC in Adani’s case and there, the government is after BBC.”
The documentary examined how “Narendra Modi’s premiership has been dogged by persistent allegations about the attitude of his government towards India’s Muslim population” and “a series of controversial policies” implemented by Modi following his 2019 re-election, including “the removal of Kashmir’s special status guaranteed under Article 370” and “a citizenship law that many said treated Muslims unfairly”, which “has been accompanied by reports of violent attacks on Muslims by Hindus,” the BBC stated.
The government ordered Twitter and YouTube to block any links to the documentary and forbade people from posting snippets on social media, invoking emergency powers under its information technology laws. It labelled the BBC’s documentary as a ‘propaganda piece designed to push a particular discredited narrative.’