The entrance to the BBC office building raided by Indian tax authorities, in New Delhi February 14, 2023. SAJJAD HUSSAIN / AFP
The raid by the financial authorities looks like retaliation in every respect. BBC offices in New Delhi and Bombay were raided on Tuesday February 14 and Wednesday February 15, just weeks after the release of a documentary criticizing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
According to several employees of the British chain in New Delhi, the descent began just before noon on Tuesday. “The agents broke into the premises. They asked us to leave our computers and not to use our phones, explains a journalist present at the premises on condition of anonymity. They claimed it was a simple investigation and not a search per se, but that’s an understatement. »
Tax officials searched the contents of the computers of BBC administrators, but also of journalists. “They went by keywords, looking for terms like ‘tax’ or even ‘dirty money’,” says the journalist, who was finally allowed to leave the site around 6:30 p.m. after checking his computer. The search was still ongoing as of Wednesday morning.
A spokesman for Mr Modi’s BJP said while the BBC had nothing to be ashamed of, it had nothing to fear
The British broadcaster confirmed on Twitter that the tax authorities are in its offices, adding that it is fully cooperating with them. The Income Tax Office was contacted several times by Le Monde about the purpose of this visit, but did not respond.
Gaurav Bhatia, a spokesman for Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata (Indian People’s Party, BJP) party, told a news conference that while the BBC had nothing to be ashamed of, it had nothing to fear. He then launched a vicious attack on the British broadcaster, accusing it of being “corrupt”, indulging in “anti-Indian propaganda” and calling its reporting “toxic”. According to him, these raids are legal and the timing would have nothing to do with the government.
“If these really were tax compliance issues, why would you spend thirty minutes attacking the BBC in such a vicious manner? protests Abhinandan Sekhri, co-founder of Newslaundry, an information site that has also been the victim of similar crackdowns by the tax authorities in the past.
Intimidate the press.
At the end of January, the BBC aired a two-part documentary entitled India. The Modi issue, which has dissected the Hindu nationalist leader’s xenophobic policies since he took power in Gujarat, his political stronghold in the west of the country. The documentary claims Narendra Modi ordered police not to intervene in the anti-Muslim pogroms that killed up to 2,000 people in that state in 2002.
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