NEW DELHI: At around 11am on Feb 14, some 20 Indian tax officials and police burst into the BBC’s offices in New Delhi, shouting at staff to step away from their computers and hand over their mobile phones, according to two people present.

At the company’s bureau in India’s financial capital, Mumbai, tax officials launched a second raid. The government said the BBC had failed to respond to repeated requests to clarify its tax affairs related to the profits and remittances from its Indian operations.

The BBC has said it is cooperating fully with tax authorities and hopes to resolve matters quickly, adding its journalists would continue to report “without fear or favour”. It declined to comment for this story.

Three weeks before the raids — which the government called a “survey” — the BBC released a two-part documentary that included an examination of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in sectarian riots in his home state of Gujarat in 2002 when he was chief minister there. The documentary, which was only broadcast in Britain, accused Modi of fostering a climate of impunity that fuelled the violence.

Modi’s government has called the documentary “biased” and reflecting a “colonial mindset”. Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar told the ANI news agency last week it was “politics by another means” and suggested its timing was intended to undermine support for Modi. The BBC has said it stands by the reporting.

The 72-year-old prime minister enjoys high approval ratings and is expected to run for reelection next year for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

In late January, Indian authorities ordered the removal of social media posts sharing the documentary and police detained some Indian students who tried to screen it, saying it would disturb the peace. They were released shortly afterwards.

The tax inspections at the BBC’s offices — during which officials cloned the mobile phones of some senior staff and searched computers, according to the two people present — have highlighted the concerns of some journalists and media rights watchdogs about what they say is a decline in press freedom under Modi.“There’s never been a golden age of Indian journalism,” said Abhinandan Sekhri, chief executive of independent online media group, Newslaundry, whose offices in New Delhi were surveyed twice by tax officials in 2021 after critical coverage of Modi’s administration. “But it has never been like it is now.” A criminal case filed by the tax department against Sekhri alleging tax evasion and forging a valuation report was thrown out by a judge in Delhi in November. Sekhri has sued the government for attacks on his fundamental rights and freedom of expression; the case is being heard in the Delhi High court.

Modi’s government has vigorously denied the BBC tax inspection — the first against an international news organisation in decades — was a response to the film.

“The BBC operates under two private companies in India: like any other foreign company, they are open to scrutiny and tax laws apply to them,” said Kanchan Gupta, senior adviser to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The BBC had received more than 10 tax notices before the documentary aired, he said.

Published in Dawn, March 5th, 2023