Indian tax authorities searched the BBC offices in New Delhi and Mumbai on Tuesday, the British public broadcaster said in a statement, a few weeks after it released a two-part documentary investigating Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in the 2002 religious riots that killed hundreds in the western state of Gujarat.
“The Income Tax Authorities are currently at the BBC offices in New Delhi and Mumbai and we are fully cooperating,” the BBC News press service wrote in a short statement on Twitter. “We hope to have this situation resolved as soon as possible.”
In January, the BBC released a documentary looking into the role played by Modi in large-scale religious riots that killed nearly 1,000 people — mostly Muslims — in the state of Gujarat in 2002.
The investigation quoted an unpublished report from the British Foreign Office, which said that Modi, who was chief minister of Gujarat at the time, was “directly responsible” for the “climate of impunity” that led to the riots.
According to the BBC, the Indian authorities were given a right to reply in the documentary, but declined to do so.
Modi, who has denied any wrongdoing, was cleared of complicity in the 2002 riots following an investigation commissioned by the Indian Supreme Court, in 2013.
The documentary, which the Indian government banned shortly after its release, was described as “hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage” by Kanchan Gupta, a senior adviser to the ministry of information and broadcasting.
