Indian tax officials began searching the BBC’s offices in the capital New Delhi on Tuesday, British television reported.
The raid comes weeks after the release of a controversial documentary examining Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role during the 2002 anti-Muslim riots.
The BBC said it was fully cooperating. “We hope that this situation will be resolved as soon as possible,” she said in a statement.
Revenue Department teams raided BBC offices in Delhi and Mumbai, the Press Trust of India news agency reported, citing unnamed officials.
Indian tax authorities declined to comment on the situation.
Human rights groups and opposition politicians denounced the move as a scare tactic aimed at suppressing the media.
The record continues “a trend of using government agencies to intimidate and harass media that is critical of government policies or the ruling class,” the Publishers Union of India said in a statement.
The investigation is “undemocratic” and “reeks of despair and shows that the Modi government is afraid of criticism,” KC Venugopal, secretary general of the opposition Congress party, tweeted. “We condemn these intimidation tactics in the strongest terms.”
India last month banned the two-part documentary “India: The Modi Question” and authorities scrambled to halt showings and restrict its sharing on social media, in a move critics and political opponents have called an attack on privacy. freedom of the press.
The Indian Foreign Ministry called the documentary a “propaganda piece designed to push a particularly discredited narrative” that “lacked objectivity.”
In a statement, the BBC said the documentary was “rigorously researched” and had a wide range of voices and opinions.
“We offered the Indian government the right to respond to the issues raised in the series, but they refused,” the note said.
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Associated Press writers Sheikh Saaliq and Piyush Nagpal contributed to this report.
