Indian tax authorities raided BBC’s New Delhi offices on Tuesday, weeks after it aired a documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in the deadly riots of 2002 in the western state of Gujarat.
A BBC employee based in the office told AFP that the tax raid was in progress and that officials were “confiscating all phones”.
Police were at the BBC’s office in the centre of the capital to prevent people from entering or leaving, an AFP journalist at the scene reported.
“A government procedure is happening inside the office,” an official said, declining to disclose which department he was from.
Last month, the broadcaster aired a two-part documentary alleging that the then-Chief Minister Modi ordered police to turn a blind eye to the riots. The violence left at least 1,000 people dead, most of them minority Muslims.
Government adviser Kanchan Gupta had slammed the documentary as “hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage”.
Earlier, the Indian foreign ministry dismissed the news as “propaganda”.
According to the documentary, the inquiry team assessed that Modi had prevented the police from acting to stop the violence targeted against Muslims, stating that he had specifically ordered law-enforcing authorities not to intervene. The documentary also features a former top UK diplomat who says that the violence had been planned by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)
Arindam Bagchi, spokesperson for the foreign ministry, has termed the BBC documentary a “propaganda piece”.
India’s government blocked videos and tweets sharing links to the documentary soon after its release, calling it “hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage”.
